This was just a correlational study, so why do they assume pet ownership is causal? (Paper is paywalled so maybe someone else can see their reasoning).

​

>Sustained ownership of a pet could mitigate cognitive disparities in older adults. Further studies are needed to examine potential causal pathways, including physical activity and stress buffering, versus selection effects.

Again.

Libertarian free will DOESN'T EXIST, but that doesn't matter since most people really mean compatibilist free will which is compatible with a deterministic universe.

Arguments about why libertarian free will doesn't exist don't apply to compatibilist free will. They are completely different things.

Compatibilist free will could be said to be based on the doctrine of determinism.

Hence it makes no sense to use any determinism based arguments against it.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

You've given such a basic take, it's not hard to understand.

But yes, your advice is really good, maybe you should meditate on it.

Here are some basic starting points

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

>What matters is t-1 moment before the first *choice*, the combo of genetics, life experiences, and external circumstances was out of the toddler's control. And that combo made the toddler choose a banana over an apple.

No, that doesn't matter at all.

>So, why do we call it free will if the toddler had no control over choosing a banana or apple?

Because it's "them" acting in line with their desires, rather than them being forced or coerced into doing them. That's a big meaningful distinction people and society uses.

So let's use the example of whether a toddler decides to hit someone.

If in one example the toddler decides due to DNA and past experiences "outside their control" that they want to hit someone and then hits someone.

Vs. If a toddler due to DNA and past experiences "outside their control" decide that they don't want to hit someone, but someone promises them a chocolate if they hit someone and that they will get beaten up if they don't.

You would treat the toddler different depending on which. (The example probably works better using adults, but you get the point)

Basically the whole of morality and justice are based on this concept of compatibilist free will. Even if you deny that free will exists, you still would use the concept.

>A human's existence from conception to death is a sequence of moments -- seconds, milliseconds, and so on. Do we agree that up until some moment, a human cannot exercise a free choice? What free choice a newborn baby has?
>
>Can we also agree that up to the moment of the first manifestation of what we view as a free choice, the prior moment has a combo of genetics, life experiences, and external circumstances that are out of the child's control?
>
>Each process and action has a beginning and end within a human's lifetime. So, what moment can we define as the beginning of free will?

There is no beginning. This whole analysis just makes no sense, since you aren't talking about what anyone really means by the term. You are talking about being God, not free will.

>In other words, can we define a moment when a person separates himself from a combo of genetics, life experiences, and external circumstances?

They aren't different. You could say free will is just a property used when analysing deterministic systems of genetics and environments.

Again you are talking about libertarian free will, which is just incoherent and makes no sense. Libertarian free will DOESN'T EXIST. It makes no sense to talk about it or use such a definition.

>You can be coerced by chemicals in your head, imbalances exist and can be adjusted to change things. You are coerced constantly by these chemicals you are not them

This makes zero sense to me. You are basically saying, "you" are being coerced by your brain. That you are not your brain.

What do you mean by "you" how are your defining it? How is any definition of "you" coherent if it doesn't include your brain the chemicals in it. How is any definition of "you" coherent if it treats the brain and chemicals as some external coercive influence.

>But you are being coerced, by the chemicals in your head and all youve grown up to become.

That's dualistic thinking. Your brain isn't something separate to you. You are a body, which has a brain that has conscious activity.

Those chemical are you, they aren't something separate coercing you.

>Free will to most people would be you come to two doors you have a choice to use either door or none.

So how do you define choice.

Let's use a simplistic system of a thermostat. That system will make the choice to turn off the heating once it gets to a certain temperature.

Choice is just about a deterministic system being what causes an action.

>A determinist would say you do not you are destined to choose whatever you end up choosing based on your preceding life.

That's what a compatibilist will say also.

>A compatibalist would say you are destined to choose what you choose but it feels free enough as you arent being coerced to choose.

It's got nothing to do with how they feel. It's about whether in fact you are being coerced or not.

Is someone holding a gun making you do an action or did you do it because you wanted to. There is a matter of fact here, it's nothing to do with how they feel.

>But i think we are making the same point determinists and people who believe in free will are talking about a different thing than what compatibalists are talking about when they say free will.
>
>When a determinist is talking about free will they are talking about the ability to make independent choices.

I'm not really familiar with your terminology. I would say a determinist simply states the world is deterministic, rather than making any comment of free will.

When you say "independent choices" independent from what? If it's independent from some external coercive influence, then yeh, that's what I think most people are talking about. If you are saying "independent" from the laws of physics, then no, I don't think that's what most people mean.

>When someone who believes in free will is talking about it they are talking about the same.

I would say people talking about free will are talking about making decisions in line with their desires free from external coercion/influence.

Which is what a compatibilist is saying.

>Here is a simple question about free will. At what exact moment of human life does it begin?

Not sure if that makes sense. It's like asking At what exact moment of human life does "happiness" begin?

​

>We don’t choose race, family, time/place of birth, or other factors when we are born.

You are your genetics and upbringing, they aren't something separate to yourself.

We aren't talking about being God, so you don't need absolute control over your own genetics and physical being.

​

>So, let’s say that the first act of “free will” occurs when a toddler chooses a banana instead of an apple. That happens at 10:00:00 PST on March 12, 2022. So, at 9:59:59 PST on March 12, 2022, the toddler didn’t have free will and one second later, he magically did.

Free will is about actions. Think of it as being able to walk. One moment the toddler couldn't walk and then one moment it could. Nothing magical about that.

>So at what point his choice became free from everything prior and everything present?

Most people have compatibilist intuitions, where you don't need to be free from everything prior and present.

Seems like you are talking about libertarian free will that doesn't exist, but that doesn't matter since most people are really talking about compatibilist free will which does exist.

Yep, you can summarise it with the statement libertarian free will doesn't exist but that doesn't matter since most people really mean compatibilist free will that does exist.

> this is a different concept than what determinists and free will believers are talking about.

I argue that you have it backwards. What you are talking about doesn't exist and is just an incoherent idea. But what people really mean is the coherent compatibilist free will.

People have incoherent views around free will, but if you properly probe you'll see that people have compatibilist intuitions.

​

>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf

>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617

Then when it comes to philosophy professors most are outright compatibilists.

[https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all)

There is a saying that that philosophers are mostly compatibilists, most laypeople have compatibilist intuitions, but amateur philosophers don't think free will exists.

So it's amateur philosophers like you that are talking about something completely different to what people really mean.

>If humans are subject to their environment the same as everything else then there cannot be free will

No because compatibilist free will is "compatible" with a deterministic world.

Or to put it better put, free will has nothing to do with determinism.

Think of free will as like being "happy", the world being deterministic says nothing about whether you can be "happy" or not, similarly the world being deterministic says nothing about compatibilist free will. They are completely different compatible concepts.

>The reason the compatibalist position is unsatisfying is because compatibalists will typically recognize the determinist nature of everything up until humans come in then they stop.

They recognise the deterministic nature of everything including humans.

>Like what makes us so fundamentally different from everything else in the universe

Nothing, that's the point. Humans are fundamentally just like everything else.

The article stumbles upon the correct approach of compatibilism, but just finds it unsatisfying without explaining why. It's like someone saying they find 2+2=4 unsatisfying and discounting it.

​

>Compatibilists will argue that freedom merely consists of the absence of compulsion. In other words, if an agent can do whatever they please, they are free and therefore the appropriate target of praise or blame, even if determinism is true. This sort of solution essentially splits freedom into two concepts: the type of freedom we recognize in everyday life, and freedom from the laws of causality. Since the latter is impossible, it makes no sense to draw any kind of moral consequence from it, and one must therefore focus on the former. This is rather unsatisfying because it feels like the philosophical version of a shoulder shrug.

>As discussed in the free will section of the article, the concept of free will makes very little sense

It is only the incoherent libertarian free will that makes little sense, but that doesn't matter since compatibilist free will is what people really mean and what is relevant when it comes to morality.

>This is rather unsatisfying because it feels like the philosophical version of a shoulder shrug.

I don't see why. It's like someone telling you that 2+2 =4, but you just fine it an unsatisfying answer.

Dennett is one of the more well known people who argue for compatibilism. I don't like everything he says, in particular the idea about it being a pragmatic approach. I think what people really mean and have always really meant was compatibilist free will.

Here are a couple of papers that I think are nice intros into free will and compatatibilism.

>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf

>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617

> The marionette controls the puppet, the puppet cannot do otherwise, but surely it's the puppet's story to tell, is it not?

Because the strings controlling us isn't something separate or different to us.

One could say that everything we do is fully determined by our DNA and environment/upbringings/experiences. But someone's DNA and experiences aren't something separate and external to a person.

A person is their DNA and experiences.

I guess then I'm fine disrespecting people then.

There was another study that showed that ML can determine race from body scans. People were like soo what, it's not an issue.

The problem is when the ML just determines you are black from a scan, and is then like no pain killers for you.

Sure, but what happens to when they get back to the wall?

How would filling someone with fluid help?

Yep, I do find it a strange position to take. I think he even said something like he could imagine that consciousness could be computational in nature.

I personally think his views have evolved but since he is famous for the hard problem, he hasn't really been that explicit about how his views have changed.

They would get ill. We don't know if they would die. There is a disease(Fatal insomnia) that stops some people sleeping and they end up dying but it's not clear if it's caused by the disease rather than lack of sleep.

>And why was his argument faulty in your opinion?

He claims the materialist position is that conscious activity is directly correlated to the amount of neural activity. I don't think any actually says or believes that, so it's a strawman.

A great deal of brain activity is repressive/controlling. So it's no surprise that if LSD reduces the overall level of neural activity that the conscious experience of a person might be greater(whatever that means).

Also it's not just a reduction in neural activity it's a change in neural activity with there being an increase level of activity around signals moving between different regions of the brain.

I guess it depends on what version.

In most versions you have the physical, whether it is created by the mind or whatever.

This physical including the brain acts solely due to the laws of physics. The brain which we can control and manipulate gives rise to changes in what people think, feel and experience.

Basically the mind reality can't actually change anything in the brain or anything physical beyond the laws of physics. This then leaves this mental layer as effectively an epiphenomena.

Anyway the main argument against idealism is just the absurdity of it's supporter, you have people bringing up how studies on LSD and past lives support idealism. Is it really worth arguing with people like Kastrup who referred to the effects of LSD in his dissertation to prove materialism wrong.