Three possibilities come to mind:

Is there an evolutionary purpose?

Does it arise as a consequence of our mental activities, a sort of side effect of our thinking?

Is it given a priori (something we have to think in order to think at all)?

  • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Because it’s not an illusion.

    Determinism seems reasonable only because people have an inaccurately simplistic conception of causation, such that they believe that consciousness and choice violate it, rather than being a part of it.

    Causation isn’t a simple linear thing - it’s an enormously complex web in which any number of things can be causes and/or effects of any number of things.

    Free will (properly understood) is just one part of that enormously complex web.

    • HowManyNimons@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      How is our experience of decision making different to one where we reach an inevitable outcome based on a complex set of parameters?

      • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Because there are points at which, exactly as seems to be the case, we consciouly choose to follow one particular path in spite of the fact that we could just as easily have chosen another.

        • Glowstick@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Even in that scenario, the “conscious choice” happened via some particular arrangement of neurons/chemical messengers/etc. Your argument is a “god of the gaps” argument- science doesn’t know everything about how the brain works, therefore some supernatural process called “free will” is the cause of the stuff science can’t explain yet.

          (No knock on you, you’re having a good faith debate :)

          • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            god of the gaps

            supernatural

            Without those obvious pejoratives, that would’ve been a pretty good summation of at least that aspect of my position.

            With those obvious pejoratives, it was reduced to an unfortunate expression of bias.

            I believe that it’s not simply that science doesn’t yet fully understand how the brain works, but that it’s not even really equipped to deal with consciousness, which while clearly a manifestation of physical processes, is not itself physical.

            That and we’re in an era in which “science” (scare quotes because part of the problem IMO is a misunderstanding of what science can do and does) has largely moved to the forefront of the pursuit of understanding, but humanity is still to some significant degree stuck in a quasi-religious mindset, so all too many have merely shifted from a devout faith that their religion provides every answer to everything ever to a devout faith that “science” provides every answer to everything ever.

            The problem then comes when they run up against something for which science can’t provide an answer. And the common response then is to blithely insist that that thing must not and cannot exist at all, since the alternative is to face the fact that science potentially cannot provide every answer to everything ever. And that’s generally accompanied by an immediate assignment of whatever it is that’s in question to the other half of their wholly binaristic worldview - if it’s not amenable to science, it must and can only be religion/magic.

            Reality, IMO, is vaster than that.

              • WatDabney@sopuli.xyz
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                2 months ago

                That’s unfortunate - you credited me with debating in good faith, yet won’t do the same.

                You rather obviously knew that the way you attempted to frame my position was disparaging - if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have felt the need to add that proviso to the end of your post. What you clearly attempted to do with that was to disparage the position, while asserting that you didn’t mean it personally.

                Ah well.