The philosophy thread general discussion

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"To say the will adds nothing to the explanation, you need to show that you can get all the information it would add, from sources other than the will."

That is, in fact, precisely what determinism does assert: all the information you would need to understand and predict human behavior, is already present at the moment of the Big Bang. Nothing is added by the evolution of human will, it is nothing more, if I may wax poetic, than raindrops evaporating in the dust (you have no idea how many posts I've waiting to say that).

Once again, here is the point—no one ever argued that the human will doesn't exist, or that it isn't a step that comes between the Big Bang and what you had for lunch today. No one denies that the information that originated in BB, all the laws and causal forces of nature, do not pass through you before being translated into action. That, in your own words, is conceded. The question is whether or not we can act or choose in any way independently of those laws and forces, whether or not we, as self-aware human minds, add anything to the information which originated from outside of ourselves.

Because if the answer is no, then I conclude that we, as self aware minds containing a will, are entirely determined by the information which existed before we did. That is, in fact, what I mean by "determined."

Only if we add something to the information we receive from the universe, something new, would I conclude we are free. Because that is what I mean by "free."

Because otherwise I do not see what is gained by adding "free" to "will." If the will adds nothing new, then why not just say "humans have a will"? It seems to me that phrase says all there is to know, if no new information originated within the self. Calling it "freewill" adds no new information beyond just saying we have a will.

I guess I can only say that I do think the will is adding information. The fact that you could get the same information from the initial conditions of the universe and the complete deterministic laws of physics doesn't mean the will doesn't add that information, it just means the information produced by the conjunction of the initial conditions of the universe and the complete deterministic laws of physics includes all information produced by anything in the universe, because, well, it does.

That doesn't mean those things that produce the information aren't the things that produce that information.

You can't predict my behavior from the initial conditions of the universe alone, you need to know the complete deterministic laws of physics as well. Neither can you predict my behavior from the initial conditions of the universe plus an incomplete set of physical laws that doesn't contain the information you could get from my will.

So I still think this is just a case of the information of the will being already implicitly added in from the start.

We don't "receive" information "from" the universe. We're part of the information in the universe.

"Free" means what it always has; my will is free because it's not controlled by things that aren't me. The fact my behavior is describable in terms of physics doesn't disprove this, precise because my will is not something independent of physics. And my will is that part of the physical systems that controls my behavior, and the only part, and thus it's meaningfully free.

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

Let's see if I understand this correctly—are you claiming that there is a source of free, independent information being added to the act of choosing and behaving, but that this information, which is added by the will, was present from the beginning of the universe? Well, that's a different approach.

You must realize how counter-intuitive that sounds, yes? The only way I can make sense of it would be if there were some kind of copy of you back at the BB, which somehow remained in latent form until you were born and lived your life. Or maybe if you regard time as a static dimension within which all events have been arrayed since the very first moment, but aren't "activated" until the "present" catches up to that part of the timeline.

In either case, I don't think that's what most people mean by "freewill." They mean something that happens spontaneously in the here and now, not predictable nor entirely caused by prior events or causal forces.

The information isn't present in the beginning of the universe, because it's not present in the initial conditions of the universe. It's present in "The complete deterministic laws of physics".

Because that's a backdoor through which you've gained complete information about any possible physical behavior, so long as you can imagine the an arbitrary condition to start with. It's a system for generating behavior.

When you combine those rules with the initial conditions of the universe and work out all the information possible from that, you're in effect simulating the entire universe, including simulating me. So the simulation of me is where you get the information about me from, which makes sense.

And the information isn't present in the conditions of the universe from the start, but rather revealed over time as the states unfold. The laws of physics, after all, are descriptive; if a hypothetical observer wants to learn them, they have to observe them by how the states evolve. And the evolution of states that adds in the specific information about the behavior I do, are the states that are me.

You can't get information about deterministic evolution from the rules and initial conditions except by its time-evolution or a simulation of its time-evolution.

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

Well, now what you are describing is a non-linear dynamic system, otherwise known as "complexity theory" (or even "chaos theory"). In non-linear systems, the evolution from one state to another state is iterative, in the sense that the equations describing the system take the output at time one as the input for time two and subsequent, and the system is sensitive enough that small changes in prior conditions can produce unpredictably large changes in the system later on (one example being a phase change like water going from liquid to solid as the tempurature falls). To the best of my knowledge, no one has demonstrated that the universe as a whole is a non-linear dynamic system, although I suppose it could be (there is evidence in both directions).

To derive free will from complexity is a bit awkward. You have to accommodate the fact that contemporary physics pretty much treats free will as an illusion, because all action (including human choices) is determined by pre-existing information. If the universe (or the human brain) can be described as a non-linear system, then it may become impossible for us (as units embedded within the system we are studying) to ever predict our own behavior, a "functional" type of free-will, even if a hypothetical observer outside the universe could still predict it.

You might find the following series of posts helpful.

Including Fighteer's youtube video

Notice that the video narrator (who is basing his presentation on contemporary science) assumes, as I do, that "comprehensively explained or predicted by pre-existing information" is incompatible with free will as it is traditionally understood (whether or not there is a "you" that chooses isn't the question they are asking).

Now, I want to emphasize that we don't know for sure if hard determinism (or "super determinism" as it is sometimes called) is really true. We pretty much have to presume it in order to create mathematical models that describe reality in a reductionist manner. Reductionism demands it, but we don't know for sure if our universe is really "reductionable" if that's a word.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 16th 2021 at 1:36:23 PM

Let me append to this conversation that you are fundamentally incorrect about the super-deterministic concept of the universe. To state that "physical laws" evolve the system from its initial state is trivially true but they depend absolutely upon that initial state. They cannot introduce new information that did not previously exist. Our current models of quantum physics absolutely demand this.

If we take hard determinism to be true, then the state of every particle in the universe at this exact moment can be traced perfectly back to the Big Bang and vice versa. There is no point at which external information entered the system* or was created ex nihilo. A uranium atom decaying in Neptune's core 2.36887 seconds from me posting this is as pre-determined as the evolution of humans or the collapse of a star into a black hole in a spiral galaxy a billion light years away.

*This disregards certain concepts of the multiverse in which "bubble universes" can overlap and impinge upon one another, but then the super-determinism expands to encompass the entirety of that multiverse. It doesn't change the underlying idea.

Remember that super-determinism includes all interactions between particles and forces as well as the particles and forces themselves. To suggest that forces act independently of particles or vice versa is incoherent.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 3:38:42 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The idea that the universe behaves as a non-linear dynamic system makes intuitive sense to me. It is, at the very least, definitely an iterative system. Whether there's a noniterative way of calculating an arbitrary state given another state feels academic to me, because that doesn't mean the mechanisms aren't iterative. I get the feeling that's not what matters to you?

FWIW in all the contexts in which I've heard them described, "determinism" is the idea that resultant states are completely accurately predictable from future states as they are caused by fixed and non-stochastic rules. As I've always heard it, "hard determinism" is not a specific kind of determinism, but rather the position that determinism is true and free will is impossible; "hard determinism" is not a kind of determinism, but a school of thought about determinism and free will; namely, incompatibilism consists of "hard determinism" and I think it's called metaphysical libertarianism? And then there's compatibilism, which I don't believe is subdivided into its possible quadrants, mainly because two of them don't have much to argue about.^note (Whether determinism is true or not is irrelevant to free will if compatible, and "Free will and determinism are compatible but free will isn't true for unrelated reasons" isn't really a position that would get into this argument in the first place, I don't think; similarly I'm not sure if there's a name for "Free will and determinism are incompatible, and determinism isn't true, but free will doesn't exist either for unrelated reasons".

So assuming the universe follows hard determinism is just assuming free will doesn't exist, not assuming a kind of determinism everyone agrees is incompatible with free will. (Because compatibilists reject hard determinism.) So every time you've mentioned "hard determinism" I've subbed in "determinism" because otherwise it'd be circular, and I don't think that's what you mean. So I'm genuinely curious what you think, here. What's the distinction between "determinism" and "hard determinism" that you're making, because from what I can interpret of how you use them, they mean the same thing, and trying to look into "hard determinism" is only turning up the thing I've heard before; it's a philosophical position, and treating it like a physical position is incoherent.

Also I've never heard of "super determinism" or "super-determinism" before, and so if they're synonymous with "hard determinism" I suggest we use that instead when discussing physics; because physics has its own theoretical concept called "superdeterminism"; funnily enough, that is a kind of determinism that is incompatible with a sense of "free choice", but in that case "free choice" is actually the hypothetical ability of an observer to choose variables for the experiment in a way that is itself unrelated to the experiment subject, and that's definitely separate from the philosophical definition of "free will". It says nothing about that philosophical sense, and only about the statistical independence or lack-thereof of events. If superdeterminism is true, quantum randomness actually isn't random, and Bell's theorem has at least one mistaken assumption. You could be a compatibilist superdeterminist, and I actually would be, only I don't so much believe superdeterminism is true as root for it to be.

And being told I'm wrong about the hard deterministic conception of the universe is funny to me because I think that conception of the universe is incoherent and have basically never described it? As for whether the physical laws depend on the initial state absolutely that's just a semantic question of what we consider the "initial state", which as it hadn't been defined I'd been vaguely presuming was basically an inventory of every particle's position and energy at a certain time from a certain reference frame, which is ignoring quantum uncertainty for sake of argument just as it's ignoring quantum indeterminism for same; to the extent that a state of the universe is inclusive of the physical laws of that universe is the extent to which I would consider that total information content to be non-external to future events.

(It's incoherent to discuss forces acting without particles, but you can discuss how a force acts in principle, by reference to arbitrary particles, like, you know, how we explain and teach physics.)

I do want to make another quibble. Contemporary physics doesn't treat free will as an illusion, or presume a kind of determinism where it must be. (It doesn't even postulate a determinism at all anymore, technically, but I know what you mean.) You can conclude free will is an illusion from what physics does say, but the reasoning in that conclusion is outside of what physics says, and I think that's an important distinction.

The step that I don't follow is why the ability to predict something from a theoretical outside omniscient perspective must imply an external control; which I guess is just that to you (and presumably other incompatibilists) a chain of cause and effect which can be predicted by information gathered from a prior step is necessarily meaningfully external to the subsequent steps. I think that the process of acquiring all the information from the knowledge of the initial conditions by application of the rules is smuggling in the information that thing adds. I suppose it makes about as much sense to me as it can why people don't all agree with that, even if I still think it's fallacious. So this has been helpful!

With that said, I guess I have another point. It seems we personally have agreed that wills exist and make decisions. You don't agree that this is "free", and you don't think it accords with what most people consider "free". I think that latter point is actually definitely wrong?

You have yourself implied that a will that isn't free only has the illusion of deciding. But if the will exists, even if it's unfree, it still decides what it decides, right? This ability to decide is what I think free will is. You've told me that's actually just regular will. So it was confusing, then, when you said there was only an illusion of decision possible. Surely it has a whole, real decision process, even if it's one that was ultimately controlled by physics.

Most people equate the idea of "free will" with the ability to make decisions. Most people don't think it's about whether the cause is spontaneous and independent or predetermined, they think about whether it's theirs. As opposed to someone or something else's. When a layperson thinks free will is wrong because of determinism, they think. Some people think if free will doesn't exist, then the concept of justice is flawed, because the people aren't really in control of their actions. The idea of "free will" is if the thing ; my point is that that is self-evident. If you think that what's self-evident is only "will" and not "free will", sure, but I'm pretty suspicious a lot of scholars with this definition accidentally find themselves thinking intuitively in terms of the nebulous popular one.

Also, I think you could use reducible the way you were wondering about reductible?

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

I'm not seeing how that follows from anything I've said, although I admit to glazing over the walls of text in the thread. Just because a hypothetical omniscient external observer could perfectly predict the universe doesn't mean that such an observer can or even should exist. That said, the holographic principle implies that one could actually have such an observer, but it would be read-only: there is no possibility of the observer having causal influence.

Again, this observation is hypothetical. While there are suggestions for "compressing" the information content in the 3D universe so that it is completely represented on a 2D surface like the event horizon of a black hole, there is not enough computing power in the universe (nor enough time) to fully read such a representation. In practical terms, no omniscient internal observer is possible.

Even though we're part of the system we're observing, we can take that into account, and in a deterministic universe the fact that we are performing the observation is also pre-determined. The observer adds no "external" information that was not already present because the observer is part of the system being observed.

Sure, and because we self-evidently make decisions, we have free will. I've always maintained that ascribing free will some metaphysical property of being "free from causation" is pointless.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 16th 2021 at 4:35:42 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Right, but the discussion of observers is only there so we can discuss "predictable from" as a proxy for "determined by" that can clear up the wording when discussing what does and doesn't cause other things. It's supposed to be a hypothetical external not-exerting-causal-influence observer; that's, that's the whole thing that that is, right? It doesn't need to exist, the point is that assuming it did exist for a moment lets us discuss properties in a handy way. And those properties do exist independent of it.

I'm also not sure where I implied any internal omniscient observer could or would exist, but that might be my bad, the information theory parts of the discussion kinda got away from me. From what you're saying, I think we agree?

And it seems we agree on the main question, at least broadly. Which does make me a little more confused why I got such crazy looks if my bizarre, never-heard-of definition of "freedom" is a variation of something else a regular here has apparently always maintained...?

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

"Most people equate the idea of "free will" with the ability to make decisions."

This statement is not true, and indicates that I have been unsuccessful in communicating my understanding of the issue. No one, to my knowledge, has ever disputed that humans have the ability to make decisions.

The people who think a lack of free will imputes a lack of moral responsibility due to a lack of control of one's actions do exactly that.

The people that think an entity without free will is nothing but an automaton do exactly that.

The people who say if free will does not exist then humans only have an illusion of choice do exactly that.

Or, rather, the above dispute that humans make decisions when they think free will doesn't exist, and dispute the self-evidence of humans' ability to make decisions when they think free will might not necessarily exist.

You haven't failed in communicating your understanding of the issue,^note at least not on this count, I've misunderstood you enough times I can't rule out having done it again without either of us catching it but you're mistaken in thinking that your conception of free will is the understanding of the average person. It's the formal, reified, scholarly metaphysical libertarian understanding of the issue, but the thing is that most people aren't scholarly philosophers, and not all scholarly philosophers are metaphysical libertarians.

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 17th 2021 at 4:24:56 AM

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

I believe that I have attempted to engage the discussion in a spirit of good faith. I have explained every point I made in a manner that I think nearly anyone could understand. I don't know of anyone who seriously argues that no one should be punished for their actions because no one has free will (it has been used as an argument by people who believe in free will against determinism, but no one that I am aware of argues it the other way).

Anyway, I also believe that "if you are forced to make a certain decision, then that decision isn't free" accords perfectly well with what most people understand. If a logical assertion like that isn't comprehensible to you then I frankly don't know where to go from here.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 17th 2021 at 4:29:25 AM

I mean, I don't think those arguments I just listed make any sense. In fact I'd wager that I think they make less sense than you do, I'm the compatibilist here. But those are arguments that get made. What you or I think of their soundness doesn't change that.

However much you think your definition of free will is obvious and sensible and should be widely accepted doesn't impact the arguments people actually think. We disagree on what "free will" means and I similarly think my conception is obvious and sensible and should be widely accepted. The fact of the matter is most people don't properly agree with either of us, for better or worse. And nothing we can say can change that.

Most people wouldn't dispute "if you are forced to make a certain decision, then that decision isn't free" but that's irrelevant because that's not where their definition of "free will" differs from yours. It's not where mine does, even—we disagree about whether determinism represents something forcing you to make a certain decision.

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

That's the 'definition'' of determinism. Look, if you want to believe that because you contain information from the origin of the universe, that means you have free will, be my guest. I've point out multiple reasons why I and others would find that assertion illogical. What you do with that is on you.

It's not the definition of determinism. Determinism says nothing about if things are forced to happen a certain way, just that they necessarily will happen that way due to causation.

The idea that that causation must be something forcing people to act a certain way against their will is a separate step. Even if I'm wrong and it's a necessarily logically valid step, it's still a step, and thus an implication of determinism and not an explicit part of its definition.

This is semantics, but I think it's a relatively important bit of semantics.

I kinda feel like I've offended you somehow now? Or have I just dragged this on too long? Sorry, if so.

Yes, you and others think my arguments are illogical, and you've given some reasons why. And I and others think your arguments are illogical, and I've given some reasons why. And we just disagree. I thought that was the premise of this conversation?

Was it saying that most people don't agree with either of us? Because, uh, they don't. I mean my evidence is anecdotal so I'd listen if someone has something better or even their own experience, but there's not really a way to convince me from first principles that nobody would argue a thing when I've seen people argue it.

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

To say that causation is "forcing" something to happen is incoherent. It happens as it happens; c'est la vie; que será será. There is no causative agent; it's simply the natural evolution of cause and effect. Does the rain force the ground to get wet? Does the field mouse force the fox to eat it? Does the stomach force the intestines to extract nutrients from food? Does the star force atoms to undergo fusion in its core?

These are all fundamentally interconnected systems. X leads to Y leads to Z in a magnificent tapestry that we are simply part of.

People get so wound up over compulsion and coercion. We're compelled from the moment we come into existence as a tiny bundle of cells to consume energy or die. Our choices only exist within the limited scope of things that we are able to do at any particular time. I can choose right now to uncross my legs as I'm sitting at my desk, but I cannot choose to float through the air and defecate on Rush Limbaugh's corpse.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 17th 2021 at 5:17:14 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Maybe, but calling all that Freewill is a misuse of the term. And the use of "force" and "coercion" is correct in this case because we are discussing the status of human decisions.

Human decisions are not atomic events distinct from their environment. That is the point of this discussion. They are part of the same tapestry of cause and effect as everything else.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Not everything that causes me to do something "forces" me to; some causes are indirect, in that I decide differently because I am considering them. Someone asking me for a favor is a cause of my behavior if I do that favor, but certainly not forced and probably not coerced.

And some causes are my choices viewed from another perspective, and I don't think that's "forcing" me, either. Ultimately I think the main argument we've had is equivalent to "Can you say causal factors behind a certain decision necessarily forced that decision to be made?" and my argument is "You can't necessarily say that", to your "You can". You're free to disagree, but by that same token I disagree that "forced" is appropriate terminology. (And "coercion" certainly isn't appropriate, I don't think you can be "coerced" by inanimate forces.)

Ultimately it just feels hollow to insist this must be a misuse of terminology after a long discussion of why we each define the terminology the way we do. Just descriptivistically speaking, a substantial group of people define "free will" like I do and a sizeable group defines it like Fighteer does and of course a sizeable group define it like you do; and prescriptivistically, you and I have given arguments why our conception of "free will" follows from our individual conceptions of "freedom" and "will". There's no misuse, here, just disagreement.

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

@Fighteer: I'm not sure what your point is here: are you saying that we have freewill because our decisions are not distinct from the environment? Or that we do not?

@Raichu: If your decision is entirely explained by pre-existing causal factors, I believe that it is appropriate to say that your decision was "forced" by them in that you are unable to make a different choice. I don't insist on a specific terminology—my point is that if your will adds no new element to the decision, your decision isn't free. Use whatever words you like to paraphrase that, but I think I have made my meaning clear.

As we've talked about several times, the common definitions of "free will", "force", and "coercion" are not really useful in a scientific sense because they are too vague.

"John forced me to open the safe." / "My hunger forced me to eat." / "The photon forced the electron to gain energy."

If we look at the universe deterministically, these are all sequences of causal events with no inherent distinction other than complexity. Moreover, they can be played backwards in time: "Closing the safe caused John to withdraw his gun." / "Vomiting food made me hungry." / "The electron lost energy and emitted a photon."

To a layman this seems like nonsense and obviously it's not very useful when talking to your friends. This is part of why I draw a distinction between scientific and colloquial usage. My position all along is that what we experience as free will is probably meaningless from a scientific perspective, but it feels like it to us and so we might as well go with that.

I should add that the usages of "force" and "coercion" from people who believe in negative liberty have always made me irritated. We live in coercion from the beginning of our existence. Our environment and our needs apply restraint over our behavior. There is no such thing as ideal freedom. Drawing an arbitrary distinction between coercion due to our biology and environment and coercion due to the actions of other people is a form of begging the question.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 18th 2021 at 12:10:08 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Then we are basically in agreement. From a scientific perspective (I would have said "deterministic" instead, because there are in fact scientists who do not accept hard determinism) the concept of freewill is nonsense.

Only if one is not a determinist does it make any sense.

I'm right here, you know?

I think I might be misunderstanding something, because there is a non-arbitrary distinction between "coercion"* from our biology and environment, and coercion from the actions of other people. It's that the former is from biology and environment, and the latter is from the actions of other people? Those are clearly distinct things. Now, you could argue they're not cleanly separable things, because any impact from the actions of other people affects you as an environmental factor filtered by your biology,

But, um... The thing about actions of other people is that those other people are in control of them?

There is a very real difference if my actions are limited by something someone else can control and if they're limited by something nobody can control. Yes, I am an entity within a vast and beautiful tapestry of cause and effect, and I think you could predict my actions ahead of time given sufficient information (and a scale on which quantum uncertainty is negligible) but also I'm self-evidently in control of my actions. That's what "I" am. And you are in control of yours. Whether this is "real" or only a useful fiction, illusory from a scientific perspective (which I would dispute), it's how humans understand our actions and the actions of others. If I were to make concerted efforts to deny you the ability to eat, this is clearly a constraint on your behavior that is different from the constraints on your behavior placed by your biological need to eat.

Namely, I could theoretically change what I'm doing, thus allowing you to eat. Even if there's only one non-counterfactual future course of events and so I'll always either change or not change my actions, we have the appearance of selecting from many potential courses of action. Whether our ability to make decisions is real or only apparent (and I think it's self-evidently real even under determinism), it's one of those things we need to accept to discuss ethics or rights.

Or, to make my objection another way,

You're assuming right here that the only distinction between willed events and unwilled events is complexity. And, um, no it isn't? John has a will and a photon doesn't, and even if that's a distinction that only arises as a consequence of complexity, it's still a distinction that has arisen, determinism or not. You're just assuming there's no non-arbitrary distinction between actions of other people and other environmental factors, I'd think that's why arguments for negative liberty look circular to you?

*I still don't think inanimate things can coerce you? At best they can be used to coerce you. Coercion is a type of willful action. I can coerce you, I can coerce you with a gun, but a gun can't coerce you (unless it's intelligent I suppose). If you're coerced, something is trying to make you do something, using force or threat; if you do something in response to inanimate circumstances, even threatening or harmful ones, that's something else. And while you can say an inanimate object can "force" you to do something, that's a different definition than the way a living person can make you do something through violence or other, well, force. This is purely semantic, though, I felt the need to say it but I used coercion the way you did for the rest of the post.

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.

1. Coerce: I'm not sure that it was being meant in a way that requires thoughtful intent. Pretty sure no. That's semantics. If they're using it in a way that doesn't require intent, that's their meaning and to understand them you'll have to use their meaning, not your own.

2. Regardless of intent, it is the actions themselves that affect you and your nervous system. And if we truly live in a deterministic universe with no truly meaningful free will, a person doesn't really have meaningful control any more than a falling rock either.

Edited by PointMaid on Feb 18th 2021 at 1:32:47 PM

Right, it was semantics, that's why I said it was semantics. Yes, I should use their definition of the term when they introduce the term, and I... did.

I am confused what you are telling me to do that I did not already do?

I've just always heard the definition of coercion as a form of persuasion or otherwise intentional action and looking up definitions turned up the same. So, when Fighteer complained about how people who believe in negative liberty use the term coerce as though it's meaningfully different from non-willful constraint of behavior by inanimate objects: the negative-liberty-believing people using it probably meant definitions of "coercion" that require willful intent, since that's... the regular definition of that word, so far as I can tell. This feels like useful information to be giving.

As for 2., hi, I'm a compatibilist, I reject that no meaningful free will can exist if determinism is true. I get the consensus here doesn't agree with me but it's strange to see something stated as undisputed objective fact when I've sat here disputing it for the last week. Not that I'm upset at anyone in particular, but as patterns go it's a frustrating condescension; I'm not the only compatibilist to exist, it's a whole school of thought, although a rather fractious one.

Putting that aside though, I felt like I made a case for why we should treat a person as having more meaningful control over their own actions than a rock does, even if they don't:

And if you think that's a weak case, that's fair, but you need to actually dismiss that case for "If determinism is true, humans don't meaningfully control their actions" to be a counterargument to what I said.

So I'm... not sure what your reply to me is actually saying?

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 18th 2021 at 1:50:55 PM

Mostly does better things now. Key word mostly. Writes things, but you'll never find them. Or you can ask.