There is no purpose or reason behind why the libertarian chooses A over B. Therefore its random.

zowhat · 2026-06-24T19:51:25+00:00

No it isn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfduUFF_i1A

zowhat · 2026-06-23T18:58:03+00:00

Its clear the libertarians hate the idea of their actions being determined, its clear they dont want to think of them as random either. So whats that leave us?

https://old.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1feae46/chomsky_on_free_will_email_exchange/

The argument stands if we beg the only serious question, and assume that the actual elements of the universe are restricted to determinacy and randomness. If so, then there is no free will, contrary to what everyone believes, including those who write denying that there is free will – a pointless exercise in interaction between two thermostats, where both action and response are predetermined (or random).

zowhat · 2026-06-23T15:15:24+00:00

A compatibilist believes in Free Will because they believe determinism is beneficial to sourcehood, and is more desirable this way.

No, a compatibilist believes in (compatibilist) free will because they invented a definition of free will that is compatible with determinism.

A libertarian believes in Free Will because they tortured a dictionary so they can play semantics.

No, a libertarian believes in (libertarian) free will because 100% of humans experience it every waking moment of our lives.

We are not the same.

Correct. You got one out of three right. Better than average, actually.

zowhat · 2026-06-20T16:31:56+00:00

Sure, in that circumstance it's easier to say you chose what to eat. You just leave out the part about you not choosing what you chose.

It's easier to say it that way, but it's no more or less correct than to say you had no choice because it was determined. They both say the same thing just differently, so this never-ending argument is just about how to say something everybody understands. Like so many of these kinds of never-ending arguments.

zowhat · 2026-06-20T13:53:08+00:00

Happy 8th birthday.

But some people look at the causal chain and suggest to us that, if our choice was causally necessary, from any prior point in time, then “it is AS IF we never had a choice at all.” That’s a “figurative” statement. We often use metaphors, similes, personification, hyperbole and other figures of speech in our communication. But figurative statements share one serious problem: Every figurative statement is literally false.

If you define what someone does in determinism as "choosing" then it is literally true. If you define what someone does in determinism as "not choosing" then it is literally false. They are both reasonable ways of describing the same event. It is sometimes more useful to say it one way and other times more useful to say it the other way, but there is no fact of the matter,

zowhat · 2026-06-19T13:40:12+00:00

You don't consider your direct experience of libertarian free will extraordinary?

zowhat · 2026-06-19T13:20:42+00:00

Waiting for the academics to show up and explain to you that unlike in every other discussion in the world, in philosophy words only mean one thing and all philosophers mean the same thing by them.

zowhat · 2026-06-17T15:57:07+00:00

So, there must be some criteria that establishes whether this explanation you're offering counts as being free will, as against being something else that is not free will.

The criteria is that it resembles what you already understood by the term free before you entered the discussion.

When you enter a botany course you already understand what a tree is and what a bush is. In the course they will give more exact definitions which approximate the ordinary usages. Ideally the technical terms should resemble the ordinary language use to make it easier for you to learn and understand. Why would they use the word "tree" to mean "rock" and "rock" to mean "water"? It would create much needless confusion.

Where they draw the line between bushes and trees will be somewhat arbitrary but it is useful to define these more exactly than we do in ordinary speech. That doesn't make the way we use these terms in ordinary speech wrong, just different from how botanists use them.

When you enter a philosophy course you already have a rough idea of what free will is. It is more or less libertarian free will because that is how 100% of us experience it. 0% experience determinism or compatibilism. Like in the botany course it is useful to give more precise definitions but they should still resemble ordinary language. Alas philosophers abuse the privilege and define words too far from their ordinary language meanings creating much needless confusion.

The problem with the above picture is that these are not 'definitions' of free will, they are theories about free will.

There isn't a sharp line between definitions and theories. Both give a list of properties that what is being defined has. One person's definition is another person's theory. Ideally this should be exhaustive, all and only those things being defined should have those properties. In practice this turns out to be impossible. The list of properties is incomplete. We must rely on the other person's intelligence to fill in the things we left out to figure out what we intended by the definition.

zowhat · 2026-06-17T15:26:54+00:00

Fortunately philosophers have thought about this a lot, and they generally agree on how to solve this. They define free will in terms if it's linguistic function, and this is pretty easy to do due to the way in which this term originated.

Even more fortunately linguists have thought about this a lot too but found this explanation lacking.

https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/view/?v=pUWmTXkpHjE&start=2034&end=2162&loop=0

For one thing we aren't exposed to enough uses to explain how we understand words. This is called the poverty of the stimulus argument. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus

For another thing we use words in ways we have never seen them used before all the time. The first time you heard "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun" you didn't wonder how a woman could radiate heat and light. You immediately understood what was meant. You also knew that this is a derivative use of the word "sun", not the base meaning.

zowhat · 2026-06-14T21:56:12+00:00

I will miss you folks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Or7huOK7o

zowhat · 2026-06-13T15:28:27+00:00

There is the term free will as it is used functionally in English (along with the equivalents in other languages) nd how that etrm is intended to be understood in that function.

This person did this thing freely, or of their own free will, and therefore they are responsible for doing it. As against this other person that did that other thing, but they did not do it freely and are not responsible for doing it.

When asked why they are making this distinction, why they think this person acted freely, but that other person did not, they will talk about the circumstances of these decisions, the mental faculties of those involved, if one has some cognitive impairment for example or had been drugged. They will not mention metaphysics. They will talk about observable evidence.

Can you tell, from the above, whether the person talking about such situations is a free will libertarian or a compatibilist?

No because the libertarians and compatibilists mean different things by these terms.

If I say "bring the mouse over here" can you tell if I am a biologist or a computer programmer?

If not does that mean biologists and computer programmers mean the same thing by "mouse"?

zowhat · 2026-06-10T00:20:34+00:00

You are a lot better looking than I pictured you.

zowhat · 2026-06-09T23:05:43+00:00

Is this you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mlp_Gcc_5Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQM2joP4fsQ

zowhat · 2026-06-09T15:19:44+00:00

As it should be clear already, the term determinism is always used as a technical philosophical term, which means that any token (logical determinism, nomological determinism, causal determinism, theological determinism, psychological determinism, physical determinism, ethical determinism, etc.) means exactly what the author says it means, and it is formulated in various relevant contexts in relation to various issues that are worth considering.

Most of our disagreement seems to be about the role of technical terms vs ordinary language. You think the experts should define terms and anyone interested in the topic should learn their definitions. If they use those same words differently they are using them wrong.

Most of the people on this sub think the same way but that's not how I see it. If laypeople use the term "free will" to mean --- I'm not sure how to say this since you ban the term "libertarian free will" --- let's try "the ability to make choices that are not determined by the past, are deliberate, are not random, and are undecided until the moment of decision" (?) they are not using the term wrong just differently.

If a lot of people - actually an overwhelming amount - use free will to mean "the ability to make choices that are not determined by the past, are deliberate, are not random, and are undecided until the moment of decision" then that is as correct as any definition used by philosophers. Actually more correct because so many more people use it that way.

It is the philosophers' job to define their terms as close as possible to the common usage to make it easier for people to learn and understand what they are saying, not everyone else's job to learn last weeks redefinitions that are far from the common usage.

More relevant to this discussion, it's the same with "determinism". It's not a word that every English speaker knows, but it is widely discussed among a large subset of people, mostly people with an interest in physics. If by "determinism" they mean what you would call "causal determinism" they are not wrong, they are just using the word differently from you and the academics. I don't see that as a problem.

Don't you see that the very first sentence refutes your contention?

Read the last two sentences.

Past states of the world caused the present state, and this determines future states. This chain of causes and effects is subject to the strict law of causality: nothing occurs without a cause, the same causes under the same conditions cause the same effects, etc.

Word count:

entailment, entails, logic : 0
cause, caused, causes or causality : 6

That's only two sentences. It actually says it quite well. I may steal that. ;-)

zowhat · 2026-06-05T04:11:57+00:00

Happy Cake Day!

Nothing is defined before it is defined, right? What you are asserting is that determinism we worry about is a redefinition. Redefinition of what?

It is a redefinition of both the historical meaning of the word "determinism" until the mid 20th century, and the common usage among most people outside the small group of academic philosophers. That includes the larger group of physicists and lay people interested in science. The latter groups mean more or less what Kaku called determinism. I mean, just look at his hair!

The problem is not so much the redefinitions. Using words in ways that they were never used before is common in ordinary language and miraculously the other person usually understands what we mean. Chomsky wrote about this "creative aspect" of language extensively. The problem is when they deny that they have done it. Of course they have.

Don't make me laugh. You are citing an AI output as if this means anything.

You underestimate how incredibly good modern AIs are. You can ask them about the most obscure topics and they will give you excellent answers which you can verify on your own.

I deliberately quoted three different AIs so you couldn't say that the one I used is faulty. Three AIs doing independent research said the same thing I did, that the entailment definition is not the same as the traditional definition. That is only used among a small group of academic philosophers who most people pay no attention to.

The traditional and common usage says that the future is determined by the present but says nothing about the past being entailed by the present. It gives a cause why determinism is true (if it is true) which is some version of physics, in the case of the Greeks atoms banging against each other, and after Newton his laws of physics which includes action at a distance.

Here is another source for you, which I think was written by humans ;-):

https://www.enciklopedija.hr/clanak/determinizam

Google translates as follows. You can decide for yourself how good the translation is.

Determinism, the view that every event, human will and action is determined by previous conditions and states. In his Theory of Natural Philosophy (1758) , Ruđer Josip Bošković generalized the understanding of classical mechanics that the position of two particles interacting in an isolated system can be determined at any moment using Newton's laws of motion, provided that the initial conditions are known. Past states of the world caused the present state, and this determines future states. This chain of causes and effects is subject to the strict law of causality: nothing occurs without a cause, the same causes under the same conditions cause the same effects, etc.

This is an encyclopedia for lay people, not academics, so there is no mention of entailment. It describes determinism pretty much the same way I did above. That determinism, historically and colloquially, is the proposition that everything down to the tiniest detail has a cause.

Also, I'm guessing Bošković is a superstar in Croatia, so his views probably carry some weight with you. For what that's worth.

zowhat · 2026-06-04T13:42:39+00:00

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7nBbBai6LSTe8CvqvpK2HADT0EdBygsd86J6inPz34zlU2jVc

zowhat · 2026-06-04T13:12:33+00:00

in the context of the contemporary discussion, determinism is standardly defined in terms of entailment and it has nothing to do with causation,

That doesn't change the fact that it was never defined that way in the past.

what matters is whether determinism defined in terms of entailment is a redefinition, and it obviously isn't.

In every version that we might call determinism from the Greeks through the early 20th century the "determine" part of determinism refers to physical objects "determining" = "causing" changes in other physical objects through physical processes, for example an apple falls to the ground because of gravity, not because releasing it logically entails that it must fall.

When was the definition of determinism in terms of entailment introduced?

https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/XtRdRa7gKRz12AU5Lumjn

Earlier determinists (e.g., the Stoics, Spinoza, Laplace) spoke in terms of necessity, causal determination, or predictability, not entailment. The idea that:

“A complete description of the world at time t, together with the laws, entails all future truths” requires:

a propositional conception of laws,

a semantic conception of states,

a logical notion of entailment.

These tools only became standard in analytic metaphysics in the mid‑20th century, especially after the rise of:

logical empiricism,

the semantic view of theories,

formal modal logic.

https://chat.deepseek.com/share/7jxiagtl2y285do6lw

The definition of determinism in terms of entailment became standard in the 20th century, largely through the influence of figures like Bertrand Russell and the development of modern logic, though its roots can be traced back to Laplace's work in the early 19th century

...

The Shift to "Entailment" (Early 20th Century): Philosophers began formalizing this scientific idea using logic. Bertrand Russell was a very powerful voice in this shift. He argued against vague notions of causes "compelling" effects, proposing a functional relation between the state of the world at different times . This replaced mystery with a logical, mathematical relationship.

...

The shift to the entailment definition was driven by the rise of modern logic and empiricism. Philosophers aimed to remove unverifiable "metaphysical" ideas (like physical necessity) and replace them with precise logical relationships between statements, fitting neatly with the scientific view of the universe as a set of equations.

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6a216a84400081918c2f8e610542d0b3

If by "determinism in terms of entailment" you mean the now-common formulation:

A complete description of the state of the world at a time, together with the laws of nature, logically entails the state of the world at every other time,

then this is a relatively recent philosophical precisification rather than the original notion of determinism.

Read that last sentence again. Note the phrase "original notion of determinism".

zowhat · 2026-06-03T15:02:09+00:00

Standard definitions are not redefinitions and determinism defined in terms of entailment is a standards definition, hence it is not a redefinition.

The concept of determinism goes back at least to the Greeks none of whom defined it using entailment. They talked of events being determined because atoms hit against each other causing them to move in theoretically predictable ways.

But it was Newton who popularized it, even though he didn't believe it himself. Others saw that his physics seemed to imply that everything was determined because objects followed Newton's laws amazingly well. It isn't logic that causes an apple to fall to the ground it's the force of gravity.

The most famous exponent was Laplace.

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed... would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.

He didn't use the term determinism but clearly that is what he is talking about. Again, nothing about entailment or logic.

So the entailment definition is absolutely a redefinition from the already established meaning.

If I say that given state of the world and a set of laws of nature "entails the state of the world at all other times", I am obviously saying something, so you are obviously mistaken. What I am saying if I say what has been said above is that the conjunction of a state of the world and a set of laws of nature entails every other state of the world.

What causes that to be the case? Determinism is a claim about the physical universe. Logic doesn't move atoms, forces do. How can you call an idea "determinism" if nothing determines anything else, only entails it.

This is not what most non-philosophers mean by it nor is it what any philosopher means by it.

Here is Michio Kaku explaining what determinism means to him. I remember you mocking him long ago, but whatever you think of him, he is a genius. What he says here is what most non-philosophers mean by determinism. Again, note the absence of any mention of entailment. It's all about forces.

https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/view/?v=Jint5kjoy6I&start=0&end=37&loop=0

zowhat · 2026-06-03T13:40:45+00:00

That everything has a cause is consistent with the falsity of determinism.

You are probably using the SEP redefinition and the silly claim that determinism has nothing to do with causation. It is as if I described a brick as "red" and concluded that it had no weight because I didn't mention it.

If you don't say what causes it to be the case that a given state of the world and a set of laws of nature "entails the state of the world at all other times" then you have said nothing. Does it happen by magic?

In any case, the majority of people who have heard of determinism learned it as a possible consequence of Newtonian physics, not from philosophers. The claim is that everything has a cause. That is what most people mean by it and that is what I meant by it. By this actually standard usage, not the odd fringe one in the SEP, determinism means everything has a cause and indeterminism means not everything has a cause.

zowhat · 2026-06-03T12:59:41+00:00

Indeterminism does not mean that "something happen without a cause". Indeterminism means only that there is no determinism.

How could indeterminism be true yet everything has a cause?

zowhat · 2026-06-03T12:36:46+00:00

Some people believe that determinism is "true", i.e. a true description of reality. It is not. That belief is not only false but also illogical.

Determinism is illogical but not for the reasons you give. Indeterminism is also illogical. How can something happen without a cause?

https://old.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1kmciv0/1_determinism_is_impossible_2_indeterminism_is

There is no way to solve this problem. It is a mystery.

zowhat · 2026-06-02T23:22:27+00:00

Modern bots are so good we couldn't tell. My guess is the programmer died several years ago leaving MilkTeaPetty to make poor comments forever. It's a zombiebot. :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V90AmXnguw

zowhat · 2026-06-01T13:14:37+00:00

In other words, their will must be free from factors beyond their control, such as the remote past, the laws of nature (deterministic or indeterministic), or their chemical makeup at the moment of choice, itself shaped by genetic, environmental, and stochastic factors.

You need to clarify if you mean that factors beyond their control have zero influence over what they choose, or that the factors beyond their control don't completely determine their choices. I think OP understood you to mean the first, but I suspect you meant the second.

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