GrahamH wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

romansh wrote:
This I find not totally clear. I would agree most would agree that if they are not bound by environmental circumstances they have free will. But most just sidestep the fact the issue is in a given situation they cannot do otherwise in a deterministic world. Apparently most seem to think they can at least in the USA. [Jerry Coyne's video].

Of course most people don't philosophise about it, they just think they create their own thoughts and ideas from within and are oblivious to most of their influences.
...

Of course,the truth is that your thoughts are the product of external circumstances and mind - ie, both are important, and actions are a product of such a combination, with mind not being solely a function of circumstances.

As has been explained to you many times, it's rather arbitrary where you choose to draw the boundary of 'mind'. The brain is as much 'circumstances' as anything else. There is no evidence for a something else you might call 'mind' that is not part of the state of the world covered by 'circumstances'.

What a load of b*ll*cks!

DavidMcC wrote: What a load of b*ll*cks!

You appear not to recognize your very own model for free will is purely a product of circumstance.

romansh wrote:

John Platko wrote: What you seem to insist as being required for "freedom to do your own thing" is an untestable fantasy that all evidence suggests has nothing to do with the reality that we live in. And discussing such things is more related to discussing what would happen if I went back in time and killed my grandfather than anything related to actual choices actual people make.

The fact that under the exact same circumstances I would always make the exact same choice means nothing more than I am at the exact moment in time (in the exact universe) where I make that choice. How could it be otherwise and why would anyone want it to be otherwise?

Well then, the free will as it is most commonly seen is a fantasy for you. Good.

Not at all. I think most people think of free will as something like: I have free will if I can choose to have my ice cream in a cone or a cup. Most people don't sit around after they finished their cone wondering if they could have chosen the cup.

So when psychology departments test priming of individuals that are unaware of being primed what exactly is being tested other than the common perception of free will?

They are testing if people have free will, and perhaps how much. But they are not testing if they could have made other choices than the ones they made.

While could have done otherwise is impossible to test but so what?

So it's meaningless to speculate about such supernatural (beyond scientific understanding) things. They are not of any importance to the world we actually live in. And sadly, such things tend to be used by those intent on spinning their metaphysical yarns in an effort to rationalize whatever position or choices they find themselves limited to.

The phrase for me is just a help to clarify to others what exactly is being discussed.

And you're making it perfectly clear to me that you are discussing something that must, by the very nature of what you want to discuss, remain in the realm of speculation. Why anyone is interested in what can only be speculated about as opposed to what we actually experience, i.e. making one time choices, is curious - and obviously unproductive.

I suspect we all (or at least a vast majority) succumb to this fantasy ... ie we might feel chuffed for a job well done, or feel guilty for some infraction or another, be envious of someone's good fortune, or perhaps think Trump could have done otherwise in the circumstances he finds himself.

I feel no need to ponder if Trump could have chosen otherwise. Or if the people who elected him could have chosen otherwise. I know some people who voted for him and I've studied their decision making process for such things for years. In on case I have in mind the person votes against his primary values because he is not free to vote in a way that would upset his brothers and sisters, and perhaps more importantly, his dead parents. There seems to be very little limt on how much rationalization that will take place to satisfy those fundamental demands. Now talking about the actual choices available to him and how those choices limit his free will might be useful - if not for him perhaps for his children. Talking about could he have voted for Hillary - not so much.

romansh wrote:

DavidMcC wrote: What a load of b*ll*cks!

You appear not to recognize your very own model for free will is purely a product of circumstance.

I'm not sure that it is correct to claim that the model is "purely a product of circumstances". Rather I have described the circumstances under which FW may occur, and those under which it does not.
You are the one who needs to recognize that any model of free will needs to specify under what circumstances it can occur. I have done so, (as you well know) and that is more than any one else has done, so mine is the only scientifically valid version.

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

Of course most people don't philosophise about it, they just think they create their own thoughts and ideas from within and are oblivious to most of their influences.
...

Of course,the truth is that your thoughts are the product of external circumstances and mind - ie, both are important, and actions are a product of such a combination, with mind not being solely a function of circumstances.

As has been explained to you many times, it's rather arbitrary where you choose to draw the boundary of 'mind'. The brain is as much 'circumstances' as anything else. There is no evidence for a something else you might call 'mind' that is not part of the state of the world covered by 'circumstances'.

What a load of b*ll*cks!

To explain a little further (for it is exvident that you need furthe explanation), the over-simplistic and over-vague statement that "the brain is as much much circumstances as anything" clarifies nothing, and probably leads you to misunderstand any serious model of FW and of when it can apply. No doubt this is deliberate, so that you can deny that anyone ever has FW, or that it can only ever apply to trivial circumstances (like what flavour ice-cream to buy), never mind which college to apply to, or which job offer to follow up. (Are those trivial too? - I think not!)

DavidMcC wrote:

romansh wrote:

DavidMcC wrote: What a load of b*ll*cks!

You appear not to recognize your very own model for free will is purely a product of circumstance.

I'm not sure that it is correct to claim that the model is "purely a product of circumstances". Rather I have described the circumstances under which FW may occur, and those under which it does not.
You are the one who needs to recognize that any model of free will needs to specify under what circumstances it can occur. I have done so, (as you well know) and that is more than any one else has done, so mine is the only scientifically valid version.

My Buridan's ass example of my scientific model of FW it is!

DavidMcC wrote:
You are the one who needs to recognize that any model of free will needs to specify under what circumstances it can occur. I have done so, (as you well know) and that is more than any one else has done, so mine is the only scientifically valid version.

Now that really is bollocks!

John Platko wrote:Why anyone is interested in what can only be speculated about as opposed to what we actually experience, i.e. the sun going around the earth, is curious - and obviously unproductive.

FIFY

archibald wrote:

John Platko wrote:Why anyone is interested in what can only be speculated about as opposed to what we actually experience, i.e. the sun going around the earth, is curious - and obviously unproductive.

FIFY

Curious and obviously unproductive.

John Platko wrote:
Not at all. I think most people think of free will as something like: I have free will if I can choose to have my ice cream in a cone or a cup. Most people don't sit around after they finished their cone wondering if they could have chosen the cup.

What you think while that might be interesting is not really evidence. Again I point you at Jerry Coyne's video where he quotes some data. I am happy to consider your data, should you have any.

John Platko wrote:They are testing if people have free will, and perhaps how much. But they are not testing if they could have made other choices than the ones they made.

I never said they were.

John Platko wrote:So it's meaningless to speculate about such supernatural (beyond scientific understanding) things. They are not of any importance to the world we actually live in. And sadly, such things tend to be used by those intent on spinning their metaphysical yarns in an effort to rationalize whatever position or choices they find themselves limited to.

So thought experiments are meaningless to you. Fair enough your constructors in that department seem a little delinquent.
eg do parallel lines meet? While that little axiom can't be tested it is quite useful.

John Platko wrote:And you're making it perfectly clear to me that you are discussing something that must, by the very nature of what you want to discuss, remain in the realm of speculation. Why anyone is interested in what can only be speculated about as opposed to what we actually experience, i.e. making one time choices, is curious - and obviously unproductive.

It is also what most people seem to mean by free will. It is by and large just you that seems interested in constructor theory in reference to free will. A while back some students created a coin tossing machine that could replicate a toss indefinitely. Assuming as the machine began to wear it would no longer replicate the toss. So in what sense does the machine increase its freedom?

John Platko wrote:I feel no need to ponder if Trump could have chosen otherwise. Or if the people who elected him could have chosen otherwise. I know some people who voted for him and I've studied their decision making process for such things for years. In on case I have in mind the person votes against his primary values because he is not free to vote in a way that would upset his brothers and sisters, and perhaps more importantly, his dead parents. There seems to be very little limt on how much rationalization that will take place to satisfy those fundamental demands. Now talking about the actual choices available to him and how those choices limit his free will might be useful - if not for him perhaps for his children. Talking about could he have voted for Hillary - not so much.

You missed my point completely.

romansh wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Not at all. I think most people think of free will as something like: I have free will if I can choose to have my ice cream in a cone or a cup. Most people don't sit around after they finished their cone wondering if they could have chosen the cup.

What you think while that might be interesting is not really evidence. Again I point you at Jerry Coyne's video where he quotes some data. I am happy to consider your data, should you have any.

I don't recall Coyne having data about how many people sit around wondering if they could have made a different choice. Please supply a reference. I do recall a survey Coyne quoted that showed most people don't believe in determinism. I'm agnostic about that sort of thing, I think we have insufficient knowledge to know one way or the other. Even Coyne seems to leave room for doubt due to quantum indeterminism. In any case, I don't see how Coyne's survey conflicts with what I'm saying.

John Platko wrote:They are testing if people have free will, and perhaps how much. But they are not testing if they could have made other choices than the ones they made.

I never said they were.

John Platko wrote:So it's meaningless to speculate about such supernatural (beyond scientific understanding) things. They are not of any importance to the world we actually live in. And sadly, such things tend to be used by those intent on spinning their metaphysical yarns in an effort to rationalize whatever position or choices they find themselves limited to.

So thought experiments are meaningless to you.

Experiment? What exactly is the experiment? I see no experiment, I just see speculation with no evidence to back it up. That and incredible extrapolation of low level bits of experiments to the complexity of a human mind.

Fair enough your constructors in that department seem a little delinquent.
eg do parallel lines meet? While that little axiom can't be tested it is quite useful.

Insufficient information to answer your question, it depends on the from of geometry in question.

John Platko wrote:And you're making it perfectly clear to me that you are discussing something that must, by the very nature of what you want to discuss, remain in the realm of speculation. Why anyone is interested in what can only be speculated about as opposed to what we actually experience, i.e. making one time choices, is curious - and obviously unproductive.

It is also what most people seem to mean by free will.

Is that what they mean or do they mean their choice is not determined by nature?

It is by and large just you that seems interested in constructor theory in reference to free will.

I'm interested in constructor theory as an additional general mode of explanation for all sorts of things. But one can easily talk about the important aspects of free will, to the extent it is understood at this time, without using constructor theory - perhaps some day it will be otherwise.

A while back some students created a coin tossing machine that could replicate a toss indefinitely. Assuming as the machine began to wear it would no longer replicate the toss. So in what sense does the machine increase its freedom?

Can the machine create knowledge? If not, it has no free will.

John Platko wrote:I feel no need to ponder if Trump could have chosen otherwise. Or if the people who elected him could have chosen otherwise. I know some people who voted for him and I've studied their decision making process for such things for years. In on case I have in mind the person votes against his primary values because he is not free to vote in a way that would upset his brothers and sisters, and perhaps more importantly, his dead parents. There seems to be very little limt on how much rationalization that will take place to satisfy those fundamental demands. Now talking about the actual choices available to him and how those choices limit his free will might be useful - if not for him perhaps for his children. Talking about could he have voted for Hillary - not so much.

You missed my point completely.

I don't believe there can be a point to pondering if one could have made a different choice given the exact same circumstances. And if one could make a different choice, would one want to? If that happened it seems to me like something was interfering with free will. The point of free will is that you get to make a choice, not that you could have made a different choice.

John Platko wrote:I don't recall Coyne having data about how many people sit around wondering if they could have made a different choice. Please supply a reference.

A life lived is a life replete with choices. Some go well, some go wrong, and those gone wrong spell regret. You could have done it differently … should have said something else … and you might have come out ahead.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394712/

"....the feeling of self–blame for having made a poor choice.'
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ion_Making

John Platko wrote:The point of free will is that you get to make a choice, not that you could have made a different choice.

Exactly wrong. The point of free will, as commonly believed in, is that you could have made a different choice, hence the sitting around wondering if you could have made a different choice (see above), an almost endemic human activity throughout history, and especially prominent, apparently, in cultures with stronger belief in free choice and free will, such as many parts of the USA.

Not to ignore the genre of fiction that imagines some form of retuning to key moments to nake a different choice. Now these invariably seemt ot be about changing the circumstances, by manipulating the subject to coerce them to a different option or by providing information the subject didn't have at the time. It doesn't make a good story to just reset time to a key decision and leave things exactly the same so that a free will choice is made that might happen to be different. Such stories emphasise that "people sit around wondering if they could have made a different choice" but also accept that t isn't people's free will that chooses, it's circumstances. The way to get a different choice is to change the circumstances for make the person choose a different option.

Possibly worth saying that another potential benefit of a waning societal belief in free will might be less regret and self-blame.

This could be added to the previously discussed potential benefits in terms of reduced tendencies for vengeance and retribution towards others.

archibald wrote:Possibly worth saying that another potential benefit of a waning societal belief in free will might be less regret and self-blame.

This could be added to the previously discussed potential benefits in terms of reduced tendencies for vengeance and retribution towards others.

Yeah, right! The Mafia would just love it if nobody blamed them for anything they did!

archibald wrote:

John Platko wrote:I don't recall Coyne having data about how many people sit around wondering if they could have made a different choice. Please supply a reference.

A life lived is a life replete with choices. Some go well, some go wrong, and those gone wrong spell regret. You could have done it differently … should have said something else … and you might have come out ahead.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394712/

"....the feeling of self–blame for having made a poor choice.'
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ion_Making

Before I go down those rabbit holes, would you be so kind as to connect the dots between those papers and Jerry Coyne. I only recall him talking about the Sarkissian study. Admittedly, I'm not much of a Jerry Coyne fan so I need you to fill in the details for me.

John Platko wrote:The point of free will is that you get to make a choice, not that you could have made a different choice.

Exactly wrong. The point of free will, as commonly believed in, is that you could have made a different choice, hence the sitting around wondering if you could have made a different choice (see above), an almost endemic human activity throughout history, and especially prominent, apparently, in cultures with stronger belief in free choice and free will, such as many parts of the USA.

While I recall regretting choices, and having other people tell me about the choices they regret making, I don't recall anyone, other than on an internet forum, ever wondering if they could have made a different choice. I find most people, like the Sarkissian study that Jerry Coyne highlights, assume they could have but they didn't - although sometimes, they feel they had insufficient information to Monday morning quarterback at the time the decision was being made.

John Platko wrote:

archibald wrote:

John Platko wrote:I don't recall Coyne having data about how many people sit around wondering if they could have made a different choice. Please supply a reference.

A life lived is a life replete with choices. Some go well, some go wrong, and those gone wrong spell regret. You could have done it differently … should have said something else … and you might have come out ahead.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394712/

"....the feeling of self–blame for having made a poor choice.'
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ion_Making

Before I go down those rabbit holes, would you be so kind as to connect the dots between those papers and Jerry Coyne. I only recall him talking about the Sarkissian study. Admittedly, I'm not much of a Jerry Coyne fan so I need you to fill in the details for me.

John Platko wrote:The point of free will is that you get to make a choice, not that you could have made a different choice.

Exactly wrong. The point of free will, as commonly believed in, is that you could have made a different choice, hence the sitting around wondering if you could have made a different choice (see above), an almost endemic human activity throughout history, and especially prominent, apparently, in cultures with stronger belief in free choice and free will, such as many parts of the USA.

While I recall regretting choices, and having other people tell me about the choices they regret making, I don't recall anyone, other than on an internet forum, ever wondering if they could have made a different choice.I find most people, like the Sarkissian study that Jerry Coyne highlights, assume they could havebut they didn't - although sometimes, they feel they had insufficient information to Monday morning quarterback at the time the decision was being made.

Haven't you answered the point right there (in bold)?
Most people assume they could have done otherwise. What do you disagree about, and why?

GrahamH wrote:

John Platko wrote:

archibald wrote:

John Platko wrote:I don't recall Coyne having data about how many people sit around wondering if they could have made a different choice. Please supply a reference.

A life lived is a life replete with choices. Some go well, some go wrong, and those gone wrong spell regret. You could have done it differently … should have said something else … and you might have come out ahead.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2394712/

"....the feeling of self–blame for having made a poor choice.'
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ion_Making

Before I go down those rabbit holes, would you be so kind as to connect the dots between those papers and Jerry Coyne. I only recall him talking about the Sarkissian study. Admittedly, I'm not much of a Jerry Coyne fan so I need you to fill in the details for me.

John Platko wrote:The point of free will is that you get to make a choice, not that you could have made a different choice.

Exactly wrong. The point of free will, as commonly believed in, is that you could have made a different choice, hence the sitting around wondering if you could have made a different choice (see above), an almost endemic human activity throughout history, and especially prominent, apparently, in cultures with stronger belief in free choice and free will, such as many parts of the USA.

While I recall regretting choices, and having other people tell me about the choices they regret making, I don't recall anyone, other than on an internet forum, ever wondering if they could have made a different choice.I find most people, like the Sarkissian study that Jerry Coyne highlights, assume they could havebut they didn't - although sometimes, they feel they had insufficient information to Monday morning quarterback at the time the decision was being made.

Haven't you answered the point right there (in bold)?
Most people assume they could have done otherwise. What do you disagree about, and why?

I think the disagreement is if most people sit around wondering if they could have chosen otherwise or if they just assume/believe they could have. I think it's the latter, and that seems to be what the study that I saw Coyne providing data from in a talk I saw on youtube showed evidence for. Archibald now brings up some other studies - I know not why.

John Platko wrote:
I think the disagreement is if most people sit around wondering if they could have chosen otherwise or if they just assume/believe they could have. I think it's the latter, and that seems to be what the study that I saw Coyne providing data from in a talk I saw on youtube showed evidence for. Archibald now brings up some other studies - I know not why.

Surely that is not the question. Of course 'most people' don't give it any thought at all, and if asked will probably just assume it. The point is that most people who DO think about it go with that assumption that they could have taken any option in that particular moment and don't have much of a clue just why they chose as they did.
I doubt you will find many who think they did it because circumstances were just so to cause to the do just that thing. They will think it was their own will deciding, despite the circumstances. That is the common conception of free will.

GrahamH wrote:

John Platko wrote:
I think the disagreement is if most people sit around wondering if they could have chosen otherwise or if they just assume/believe they could have. I think it's the latter, and that seems to be what the study that I saw Coyne providing data from in a talk I saw on youtube showed evidence for. Archibald now brings up some other studies - I know not why.

Surely that is not the question. Of course 'most people' don't give it any thought at all, and if asked will probably just assume it. The point is that most people who DO think about it go with that assumption that they could have taken any option in that particular moment and don't have much of a clue just why they chose as they did.
I doubt you will find many who think they did it because circumstances were just so to cause to the do just that thing. They will think it was their own will deciding, despite the circumstances. That is the common conception of free will.

I agree. But somehow when I said something similar, romansh seemed to object and mention something about data Jerry Coyne had quoted.

romansh wrote:

John Platko wrote:
Not at all. I think most people think of free will as something like: I have free will if I can choose to have my ice cream in a cone or a cup. Most people don't sit around after they finished their cone wondering if they could have chosen the cup.

What you think while that might be interesting is not really evidence. Again I point you at Jerry Coyne's video where he quotes some data. I am happy to consider your data, should you have any.