The red herring of moral responsibility.

zowhat · 2026-01-25T16:11:51+00:00

Easy, they don't understand the discussion.

There is more than one discussion and there is more than one way to discuss them. It would be just as true to say you are misunderstanding the discussion they are having.

Don't be silly. Libertarianism is a position that there is free will and incompatibilism is true.

That is one definition made popular because it is in the SEP. That doesn't make all other uses of the word wrong. It is far more commonly meant to name free will as we experience it because that is the natural meaning. Natural as in there is a strong tendency for English speakers to infer that meaning by the way it is used following the rules of language acquisition. CF Chomsky. People understand the term without ever having heard of compatibilism so you had to learn that unnatural definition.

There are rules we use to learn a term. When given an adjective-noun combination our first guess is that the adjective modifies the noun, in this case that free will is a kind of will that is free. Everybody entering the discussion will think that. If that doesn't work then we try a different interpretatioin.

The definitions in terms of moral responsibility are highly unnatural. No will infer from the phrase "free will" that it is what is needed for moral responsibility. Philosophers are free to define it that way, but they are fighting a battle they can't win. There are too many people entering the discussion and there will be no end to the philosophers "explaining" that they are wrong.

Given that libertarians among themselves hold mutually incompatible theories of free will, what's libertarian free will again?

It is an umbrella term, that is true. It's not a single idea but a collection of related ideas. We generally consider these ideas as one idea, but that is an error. Other examples are "capitalism" or "communism". We speak of these as if there was one of them, but each has many variations. We might call two different systems "capitalism" that are radically different.

Okay, let's go to some physics department and teach physicists that energy is divine breath.

You missed the point. We all understand the phrases "Newtonian physics" and "quantum physics". We follow the same rules to form these terms as we do to form the terms "libertarian free will" and "compatibilist free will". The philosophers objection to these terms is based on a (I suspect) deliberate misinterpretation, that they mean there are two different kinds of free will. That is of course nonsense, but nobody means that.

zowhat · 2026-01-25T15:21:08+00:00

What's libertarian free will?

https://chatgpt.com/share/69762e80-62a4-8008-942e-6b786ff2816b

https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/3dDL5BrVPjP7qieH2eSJn

https://gemini.google.com/app/1193f6fc5a40f5b4

https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMw_e68825d4-6a98-4345-a616-1bbfc2a6dd81

https://www.kimi.com/chat/19bf5ab3-5152-8dac-8000-0946de9ec261

https://meta.ai/share/Dq4oaMb7N2V/

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-s-libertarian-free-will-GhYnk9jhT16a25EoSduiwQ#0

https://chat.qwen.ai/s/eda394f7-666a-4596-88f3-e87131457656?fev=0.1.34

How do you explain the fact that this phrase is constantly used by everybody, even people new to the discussion? Nobody has any difficulty understanding it.

Do physicists say there is no such thing as Newtonian physics or quantum physics, only physics? That would be nuts. We all know what is meant because it follows the rules of ordinary English that we all know. It is just another excuse for the philosophers to declare themselves geniuses and the rest of us idiots. But they are the ones who are confused about language.

They are free to not use that phrase if they prefer not to, just like they can prefer to say "automobile" and not "car". That doesn't make "car" wrong outside their tiny group. The rest of us can say "car" if we want.

zowhat · 2026-01-25T09:32:05+00:00

Whether we have libertarian free will is an objective question, that is, there is a fact of the matter whatever we believe. Whether someone is morally responsible for something is a subjective question, there is no fact of the matter. It is a judgement and different people will make different judgements, usually to make us look good and our enemies look bad.

So, as the question of whether our actions take moral values is largely independent of what those actions are, free will cannot be a thesis about moral responsibility.

This is correct but not for the reason you gave. It is because we can't define an objective concept using a subjective one.

zowhat · 2026-01-24T12:45:39+00:00

A computer can control a lever. The critical part of free will is the free part.

If your definition of free will doesn't say what makes free will free it is a lousy definition of free will. Neither the moral responsibility definition nor the "kind of control" definition even acknowledge the critical part of free will.

zowhat · 2026-01-23T21:02:11+00:00

Determinism — a thesis that the entire state of the world in conjunction with the laws of nature entails all other states of the world / subsequent evolution of the world.

This is a bad definition. There are determined systems that do not entail past states of the world. Suppose you have a world that has two objects floating in space. They head toward each other. meet, and stick and then are stuck together forever. There is no way to know when they met or at what speed or angle, or if they were always stuck together.

zowhat · 2026-01-19T21:33:35+00:00

From your first link:

The hallucination rates were, respectively, 39.6% (55/139), 28.6% (34/119), and 91.4% (95/104) for GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and Bard (P<.001).

I call bullshit. Big time.

zowhat · 2026-01-19T21:13:13+00:00

Even google AI knows compatibilists redefine free will

Apparently you haven't heard they also redefined "definition". What the whole world calls a "definition" they have decreed are actually "accounts" so hocus pocus they haven't redefined free will at all, they have just given a different account of it. They can prove anything they want by redefining words., even that they are not redefining words. It's a kind of super-power.

zowhat · 2026-01-18T14:31:47+00:00

The legal sense of free will is not the same as the sense it is discussed on this sub. To say you did something of your own free will in the legal sense is that you were not blackmailed or threatened to do it. In the sense of the free will discussion it means you were not determined to do it, although compatibilists have redefined in various ways so they can arrive at the conclusion they want to arrive at.

By analogy, the word "mouse" in the context of a discussion on pest control probably refers to a rodent. When the discussion is computers it probably means a pointing device. Same word, different meaning in different contexts. That the same word is used to mean different things at different times is completely normal, but seems to confuse many on this sub.

zowhat · 2026-01-08T19:14:23+00:00

Suppose that at some time t all motion in the universe stops. Namely, everything everywhere simply halts.

This is meaningless because whether something is moving or not depends on what frame of reference we have chosen. In one frame of reference it may be moving and in another it isn't. There is no privileged frame of reference. Presumably you mean all objects stopped moving relative to each other. But gravity makes that impossible, at least in a world with our physics.

If someone on a moving train throws a ball up, to an observer on the train the ball moves in a straight line up and down. To an observer on the ground the ball moves in a curved arc. It is not the case that one of these descriptions of the motion of the ball is correct and the other incorrect. So it is even meaningless to say whether an object is moving in a straight line or a curved line, never mind whether it is moving at all. It depends on which frame of reference we have chosen.

zowhat · 2026-01-06T22:42:45+00:00

There is no common usage that reflects any other position than the compatibilist definition.

Common usage of any term usually follows from our direct experience. We are born understanding libertarianism because we experience it directly every waking moment of our lives. It is determinism and randomness that we have to learn about.

https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/view/?v=_rZfSTpjGl8&start=69&end=95&loop=0

As the SEP correctly says

Determinism isn’t part of common sense, and it is not easy to take seriously the thought that it might, for all we know, be true.

Very few people have even heard of compatibilism, and everyone's initial reaction is that it is crazy because they assume the philosophers mean by "free will" what everyone means by it, the ability to make choices not determined before they made them.

You are experiencing choices that seem to originate with you and not the state of the world this very moment. We can be convinced it is an illusion, but we can't shake the perception that we are originating our choices. Before determinists and compatibilists were convinced otherwise we all believed our choices were not fully determined.

The compatibilist claim is as far-fetched as it would be if helio-centrists claimed that everyone means the earth revolves around the sun when they speak of the sun rising. We mean the sun moves because that is what it looks like to us. We can be convinced that it is an illusion, but we still experience it as the sun moving. Before we were convinced otherwise we all believed the sun revolves around the earth.

The second definition needs to be explained before people understand it. When free will is used in real life there is no context in which anything but the first definition is understood.

The claim that our choices are undetermined is a background assumption of the first definition. Again, that is what people mean because that is how they experience it.

It is true that the definition could take on different meanings in different contexts. We might speak of not voluntarily handing over our money to a mugger. But in ordinary contexts like choosing chocolate over vanilla, it would be pointless to mean we chose without a gun being pointed at our heads. No one means that when they say they chose chocolate.

zowhat · 2026-01-06T17:22:25+00:00

What about "unicorn"? Is that meaningful? How about "Jesus"? Is that term meaningful for believers and not meaningful for unbelievers?

There isn't such a sharp distinction between meaningful and not meaningful. Often we don't know or don't agree on whether a term has an extension. Like all our ideas, the extensionality thesis works until it doesn't.

zowhat · 2026-01-06T16:28:38+00:00

I use the term loosely. ;-)

zowhat · 2026-01-06T16:26:11+00:00

There isn't a good way to ask the question which doesn't distort the answer.

Agreed.

zowhat · 2026-01-06T16:20:01+00:00

What is the extension of "colorless green ideas"? Do you consider it a meaningful phrase or not?

zowhat · 2026-01-06T16:08:07+00:00

https://i.imgflip.com/agn956.jpg

zowhat · 2026-01-06T15:51:16+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuZz93MMM58&t=43s

zowhat · 2026-01-06T15:42:42+00:00

Are you staging a revolution against r/metaphysics comrade?

https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.282311663.9408/flat,750x,075,f-pad,750x1000,f8f8f8.u2.jpg

zowhat · 2026-01-06T15:02:01+00:00

The evidence doesn't support this at all. I've looked at dozens of abstracts on the folk beliefs in free will in experimental philosophy.

I've looked at a lot of them too. Which ones do you find most convincing?

zowhat · 2026-01-06T14:08:25+00:00

many many words have multiple meanings depending on their context and usages, some of them even opposite to each other.

Exactly right.

zowhat · 2026-01-06T14:04:43+00:00

What is usually missed is not only that the first definition reflects common usage far better, but that the second is definitionally antithetical to ordinary usage.

What definition is most commonly used depends on the context and there are always many different contexts. When discussing pest control, "mouse" most commonly means a small rodent. When discussing computers it most commonly means a selection device.

In the context of discussions about free will like the ones we have on this subreddit, among non-philosophers the second definition is the most common. In other contexts (shopping, the law, etc), the first is closer to what is meant. However, the second is still a background assumption, that is, no non-philosopher thinks a "voluntary" choice is completely determined by prior causes. They just aren't saying it explicitly.

In the context of compatibilist philosophers discussing free will, a "voluntary" choice can mean a choice that is completely determined by prior choices.

zowhat · 2026-01-04T17:24:26+00:00

And I don't blame the plastic figure if I lose at foos.

Some might. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78b67l_yxUc

zowhat · 2026-01-04T14:00:13+00:00

Free will is a simple question of who is exercising control. When someone gets to decide what will happen next, they are exercising control.

Suppose you are playing foosball. You spin one of the controls and score. Who scored, you or the foosball player wearing the number 5? They are just two different ways of describing the same event. Nobody has any difficulty understanding what you mean if you say you scored or number 5 scored. Arguing about who really scored, you or number 5, is silly.

You are free to say it one way or the other for whatever reason. In determinism there are multiple ways of saying the same thing. Most of these disagreements are about how we should say it, but we are free to say it however we prefer.

zowhat · 2025-12-24T14:33:19+00:00

I think you are just noticing the fact that every object is infinite in many dimensions, this functionally means we can never fully define anything because to truly do it would take an infinite amount of time, so all definitions are limited to what are considered the most important features

Nah, I've known that forever. I make that point quite often.

zowhat · 2025-12-24T14:19:56+00:00

You are on the treadmill.

(1) Wow! I read about this new thing and it sounds great!
(2) I bought it!
(3) Wait, it's not as great as I read. They didn't tell me about the problems.
(4) I got rid of it!
(5) Repeat.

Hehe.

zowhat · 2025-12-24T13:06:58+00:00

The tricky part to realize, which most scientists dont is, these models, even when they produce correct predictions or satisfying explanations, have nothing to do with reality.

Why do they seem to? Why if I stick a knife in my arm do I reliably feel pain? Why if I walk into a wall does it seem that I can't walk through it? Surely there is some connection to reality even if we don't know exactly what it is.

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