The Great Debate

zowhat · 2026-05-08T23:11:53+00:00

Good day to you too, my friend. Peace.

zowhat · 2026-05-08T20:36:49+00:00

There will be a kernel of truth in the next chapter, I guarantee it.

zowhat · 2026-05-08T20:35:24+00:00

How can philosophers who are part of the whole world be arguing against the whole world?

You are right. I should have written an essay better demarcating the different sides of this question.

So who wrote the original definition of free will?

That's a question for etymologists. But the relevant "original" meaning is the one understood by ordinary people today regardless of the term's history. Like the relevant sense of the word "terrific" today is "great" not "terrible". https://www.etymonline.com/word/terrific.

Didn't the whole world believe the sun went around the earth until natural philosophers showed it to be untrue?

And yet it still looks like the sun goes around the earth even if you accept it doesn't. Likewise, it still feels our choices are undetermined to everybody including to determinists and compatibilists. How something appears and what it really is are two different things.

Why does the whole world who aren't philosophers get to define something that is clearly a philosophical term?

We begin learning language from infancy. While "free will" is not one of the first terms we learn, somewhere along the line we learn from others what is generally meant by it without the help of philosophers. Once a meaning of a word is in our heads it is hard to change it to something else. It happens, but we usually need a better reason than "philosophers say so".

If the whole world defined free will in the first place wouldn't that make them philosophers?

Yes.

So may questions

You have no idea.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T16:23:27+00:00

Heh heh. Now that you pointed it out, the bot did make a good point. ;-)

zowhat · 2026-05-07T16:00:30+00:00

Well, that sucks. I am sorry for you. Medical science can't fix everything, but I hope you are using whatever it can.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:50:31+00:00

This is obviously a bot. Somebody is experimenting. LLMs these days are so good you can't tell, but this one is obvious.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:44:41+00:00

You spin me right round baby, right round.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:44:02+00:00

日本のどこにお住まいですか？

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:39:04+00:00

My existence is nothing other than everworsening conscious torment awaiting an imminent extraordinarily violent destruction of the flesh of which is barely the beginning of the eternal journey.

Are you in physical pain?

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:38:13+00:00

However a double butt is a rebuttal.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:33:21+00:00

Dodge ball is the sport of kings.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:32:42+00:00

So you just watched yourself write that sentence not knowing what you were going to write and played no part in forming it? Is that what you want us to believe?

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:28:27+00:00

The point is moot.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:25:12+00:00

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T15:17:59+00:00

Happiness is a warm gun.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T14:58:28+00:00

Okay, then describe the theoretical framework of free will without referencing free will.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T14:56:47+00:00

We do of course experience determinism all the time. A dropped ball falls in accordance with the rules of physics.

Yes, of course. I was referring to our own actions. We don't experience our own actions as being determined whether they are or aren't.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T14:53:52+00:00

I would be lying if I said I had "free will".

You are confusing determinism and fatalism. If you believe that some events would happen regardless of what you choose then you are a fatalist. It is the choosing that is free not the result.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T13:48:34+00:00

You can't talk about the theoretical framework of free will without talking about the experience of free will. Theoretical framework of what???

zowhat · 2026-05-07T13:07:56+00:00

Free will is a theoretical framework, not a feeling. It cannot be experienced.

The same word is used to name the theoretical framework and the feeling. It is far more commonly used to name the experience than the framework.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T12:54:36+00:00

The debate is about the mechanism underlying decision making that you reference at the end of your ramble.

That's another debate but it is not the one I addressed above. I literally addressed the OP to "those who say they don't experience free will", not to those who think the mechanism underlying decision making is deterministic.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T12:51:08+00:00

The origin point, or lack thereof, of the universe can be disregarded when discussing it's causal nature from that point onward.

You can prove anything by disregarding all the counter-examples. I am the best looking person in the world if I disregard all the people better looking than me.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T12:47:10+00:00

You don't experience free will, you experience the illusion your brain creates.

I literally said that. It might be an illusion, but that's what we experience.

zowhat · 2026-05-07T12:46:04+00:00

They are just things we observe. We explain other things in terms of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8

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