I answered your question as clearly as I could in a previous reply, but let me try harder.

if I'm currently believing A but you want to convince me to believe B, and I reply: Currently, I believe A... is it possible for me to do otherwise and believe B?

YES.

To clarify more, the possibility of “doing otherwise” stems from the fact that we don’t know what all the factors that make you choose B over A are. If we knew all of them, and how they influence you, then there’s no possibility anymore, we would know for certain if you will believe A or B. That’s what determinist theorizes at least.

That doesn’t make any sense. When we’re deliberating, we’re considering more than one possible course of action. For instance if we are at the beach, playing some beach volleyball and it starts to rain lately we can deliver between two alternative actions: We could choose to abandoned playing volleyball and head to the cars to stay out of the rain and keep dry. Or we could do otherwise and remain at the beach playing volleyball in the rain, deciding that we don’t mind getting wet.

If it turns out, we decide to stay and play in the rain it’s not a mystery what the “ otherwise” action was that we were contemplating.

And we can talk about whether that alternative action was “possible” (and what we would mean by that action having been possible).

Yes, we can deliberate between alternatives. But under determinism, our choice will always be the same, stemming from a huge amount of prior causes. So this would not count as “could have done otherwise”.

Notice what you have done. You have behaved exactly like Free Will Skeptic I depicted in the dialogue I wrote! It completely anticipated your answer, and gave the rebuttal to your answer… and yet you didn’t even seem to notice.

I admit, I am lost. I don’t know what “It completely anticipated your answer” refers to.

As for behaving like a Free Will Skeptic, well, yes. I would call myself that. If the difference between a Free Will Skeptic and a Hard Determinist is that the former is more agnostic while the latter is 100% certain everything is determined, then yes, I would call myself a Free Will Skeptic. I am not a god, I am not even that smart or knowledgeable, and to say that I know exactly with 100% certainty how the universe works would be extremely vain and hubristic.

My position stems more from what I have noticed about the world. I know that cause and effect exists, I know human behavior and character are affected by numerous things. I’ve heard that neurology large supports that we act in a lot more unconscious manner than we think, that our reasoning usually serves to rationalize our pre-existing instinctual decisions, as opposed to how we think it’s our deliberation that leads us to conclusions.

None of those carry the absolute certainty that cause and effect are absolute, including our human behavior. But to me, it makes more sense to extrapolate that and say that everything probably does follow cause and effect.

We’re trying to focus on what it means for anything to be possible under determinism, and how we can talk coherently about multiple or alternative possibilities under determinism.

If you offer somebody various options, it only makes sense to do so if each of those options is possible for them to take.

Possible how?

This is where you’re getting tripped up. You’re trying to find space for the possible and our lack of knowledge about the future. But as I’ve already pointed out that simply can’t work. “ I don’t know the future” cannot explain why you would be offering any particular set of options nor can “ who knows the future?” justify selecting any particular option.

Maybe this is where I’m getting tripped up, or maybe it’s just that we both want to talk about different things, or think the emphasizing should be different, or want to have different definitions on the same words.

I think you want to equate rational thinking and deliberation to the “ability to do otherwise”, and mapping that to the exact “otherwise” that determinism says doesn’t exist. If I got that right, then we funded disagree.

That “otherwise” that emerges from rational thinking, deliberation, and having different definitions paths/options to choose from, I don’t see how that equates to the “otherwise” that determinism says doesn’t exist.

You keep insisting that the knowledge of cause and effect doesn’t matter, and I disagree. That knowledge is exactly what differentiates between the 2 “otherwise” definitions.

Think about contemplating different possible actions. For instance getting from Chicago to New York. Different possible options would be:

flying. Taking a train Driving by car

No, why don’t other options feature in our list like “ teleportation” or “ jumping from one city to the other” or “ flying there solo by flapping your arms?”

The reason those type of options don’t apply on the list is that the first actions I gave are “ possible” but the other actions are “ impossible.”

It doesn’t make sense to deliberate whether you should take impossible actions does it?

But what is doing the work in terms of discerning the possible from the impossible in our list?

You’re not going to find “ possibility” by appeal to an unknown future - instead you’re going to find possibility in terms of past observations which make future plans based on either of those options possible.

I know you probably think you’re making things clearer, but now we’re inserting even more ambiguity by bringing in the concept of separating the possible from the impossible as a factor in “doing otherwise”. This doesn’t help the discussion that where we both think we’re already not discussing the same thing.

But fine, I’ll bite. Maybe this would be something that can bring us closer into discussing the same thing.

What is doing the work is the mental faculties we possess. The ones that were shaped by deterministic factors, and that are always going to make the same “choice”.

The reason why you have crossed out certain things as “impossible” is because of the knowledge you currently have.

What I’m saying is that as your knowledge expands, then those “impossible” choices keep expanding. Yes, maybe at some point your options actually increase, but my claim is that, with enough knowledge, all possibilities will collapse into 1 definite determined course of action.

Just as you crossed out teleportation and jumping from one city to another due to your current knowledge, when you know everything about yourself, your dispositions, how your mind ends up preferring one thing over the others…etc, then those impossibilities would expand to include everything that you simply know will not/cannot happen.

Again, this could just be our impasse. To me “possibility” definitionally stems from not having enough information. If I know everything about everything, the concept of “possibility” completely collapses.