Is belief a choice?

[Justin108]

Christians tell me all the time that atheist deserve hell because they "chose" to reject god by not believing in him. They tell me that of I believe then I will be saved as though I can simply choose what I want to believe. How is belief a choice?

If I offered you $10 000 to believe that I was George Clooney, would you start choosing to believe I'm George Clooney?

[Clownboat]

Christians tell me all the time that atheist deserve hell because they "chose" to reject god by not believing in him. They tell me that of I believe then I will be saved as though I can simply choose what I want to believe. How is belief a choice?

If I offered you $10 000 to believe that I was George Clooney, would you start choosing to believe I'm George Clooney?

I think the question is not to believe God’s existence. It is more about believing what Jesus said.

You mean, it is more about believing what is claimed by others that Jesus said, right? When phrased that way, it looses some of its gusto don't you think.

Unless of course you can show us that Jesus said anything.

[scourge99]

If religious belief were always and forever nothing more than a matter of making claims of objective fact about the Universe, then it would not and could not be a "choice." It would be a guess or a hope at best, at worst an assumption or even a delusion.

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

In short, Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -your-will

I enjoyed the article, but I have to wonder if you actually read all of it.

Starting off with personal accusations? Did i somehow provoke such a response with my previous post or is this par for the course with you?

In particular, this:

...But before reaching any sweeping conclusions, it is important to remember that this study looked at a very rudimentary kind of action. The decision to move a finger hardly ranks as the same kind of free will we exercise when we make moral choices or major life decisions. To conclude that we aren’t fully responsible for our actions, for example, would be extremely far-fetched.

There were more caveats in the article; that was only the first. I'd have been VERY surprised if Scientific American were making sweeping claims as bold as your own, and sure enough, it wasn't. Interesting research, to be sure, but as the article itself says, it's a LONG way from conclusive.

1) I agree it would be bold to claim that a single experiment is capable of providing the evidence necessary to make any sort of sweeping conclusions. I provided this article as a data point, not as conclusive proof. There are many other experiments and studies that have similar findings. So many in fact that its my understanding that the mainstream view of neuroscientists is that the libertarian idea of freewill is incoherent and contradicts what evidence is available.

2) freewill or a lack thereof is irrelevant to personal responsibility. That discussion is tangential but we can discuss it if you desire.


Now that i have addressed your responses can you actually address mine instead of the tangents? You made no attempt whatsoever to address the meat of my post where i questioned your claim that you "choose your values and priorities" .

Please address these directly:

1) Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

2) What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

3) If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... where does this regression end or how far back can you trace it?

I'd also point out that the assumption here is that the conscious mind is all there is.

I make no such assumption.

And that seems entirely irrelevant to your claim that you choose your values and priorities.

If you want an examination of the evidence that thinking is not necessarily a conscious process, take a look at Julian Jaynes's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Studying the process of thought and the consciousness of decision-making is not the same as studying "free will."

Most people define a "choice" as a conscious process. E. G., if you unconsciously pull your hand away from a hot stove you wouldn't say that you chose to do it. Or if you are claustrophobic you wouldn't say you choose to be scared of enclosed spaces.

If you don't agree then i think we need to clarify our definitions otherwise i suspect there will be a lot of miscommunication.

Tying this back in to your claims, i don't find any reason to believe that you choose your values or priorities anymore than you choose your emotions, reactions, or phobias.

In any case, if I had realized that this debate had degenerated into that hoary old argument over whether or not there is such a thing as "free will," I'd have stayed out of it. Till someone can show me the PRACTICAL difference, in my own life, between my actually having free will and the enormous, overwhelming, continuous, and invariably consistent "illusion" that I do, I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it. As I have said many times; if there is ANY claim which demands that we all ignore the direct testimony of our own experiences and accept a theoretical claim as dogma in direct contradiction to an enormous amount of objective and verifiable evidence, "there is no free will" is that claim.

There are so many strawman arguments and problems with the above it would take pages to thoroughly dismantle and address them all. So i'll be brief and just focus on a few.

1) this debate doesn't center around the existence or non-existence of freewill unless you appeal to "freewill" as a solution to the questions i pose.

Likewise, if we were discussing why objects fall when they are dropped, then the existence or non existence of angels would be irrelevant unless you claimed that objects fall because invisible angels pull things down to the ground.

So the ball is in your court on whether you are going to make this a discussion on freewill by appealing to freewill or not.

2) You've displayed what comes off as a dismissive and pretentious attitude before when it comes to this topic. Despite that, some members have honestly and directly addressed your questions and concerns but you never responded or perhaps didn't even read them.

Here was my response (there are several others in the thread): debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=497506#497506


3) Our subjective experience of consciously choosing amongst several options does not demonstrate freewill. If you believe it does then you should have no problem describing a simple experiment to demonstrate that point. I believe that such a demonstration would be Nobel prize material so i find it highly unlikely that freewill is as obvious as you claim it to be.


4) there is no evidence that supports the libertarian idea of freewill as far as i am aware. To say there is evidence is to imply that mainstream neuroscientists are all engaged in some grand conspiracy, being dogmatic, or are blatantly overlooking the facts.

What is most peculiar is that without evidence or any sort of justification you accuse others of being dogmatic. But its you who refuses to debate your own assumptions and beliefs when they chaff with your opponents claims. Its you who dismisses others honest and thoughtful arguments out of hand and refuse to even consider them.

Tell me when I get to stop pretending to make choices, and while you're at it, prove to me that I am actually "pretending" as opposed to actually making them, and I'll join the seminar on how many angels can dance on the head of this particular pin. Till then, I suppose I'll just have to keep pretending to choose what to have for breakfast, whether and what to post on any particular thread, etc. -- as everyone, including yourself, will continue to do as well.

Before we continue any further I'm going to wait to see if you provide serious responses to what has already been written. There is no point in me or anyone else responding to your questions and accusations in this thread if you are just going to thumb your nose at anyone who dares to disagree with you like you did in the other thread.

[cnorman18]

If religious belief were always and forever nothing more than a matter of making claims of objective fact about the Universe, then it would not and could not be a "choice." It would be a guess or a hope at best, at worst an assumption or even a delusion.

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

In short, Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -your-will

I enjoyed the article, but I have to wonder if you actually read all of it.

Starting off with personal accusations? Did i somehow provoke such a response with my previous post or is this par for the course with you?

Chill, dude. That was not an "accusation." It was a way of asking if you noticed that that particular passage, as well as several others, spoke directly against the point you were apparently trying to make by citing that article. Call it a rhetorical flourish.

As for the rest -- sorry, but -- without prejudice toward any of the issues raised by anyone here -- like I said, I'm not interested in this conversation.

For the record, I don't think that I have made any "claims," but only stated my opinions -- though I have asked an implicit (though obvious) question myself which YOU have not answered:

"Till someone can show me the PRACTICAL difference, in my own life, between my actually having free will and the enormous, overwhelming, continuous, and invariably consistent "illusion" that I do, I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it."

Can you show me any such practical difference?

If not, I see no reason to spend any more time and energy on the issue. Carry on. I respect your ideas and your interests; I only say that I do not share them.

[scourge99]

If religious belief were always and forever nothing more than a matter of making claims of objective fact about the Universe, then it would not and could not be a "choice." It would be a guess or a hope at best, at worst an assumption or even a delusion.

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

In short, Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -your-will

I enjoyed the article, but I have to wonder if you actually read all of it.

Starting off with personal accusations? Did i somehow provoke such a response with my previous post or is this par for the course with you?

As for the rest -- sorry, but -- without prejudice toward any of the issues raised by anyone here -- like I said, I'm not interested in this conversation.

For the record, I don't think that I have made any "claims," but only stated my opinions -- though I have asked an implicit (though obvious) question myself which YOU have not answered:

"Till someone can show me the PRACTICAL difference, in my own life, between my actually having free will and the enormous, overwhelming, continuous, and invariably consistent "illusion" that I do, I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it."

Can you show me any such practical difference?

I have addressed this twice and twice you have ignored it. In my previous response I linked to the thread where I and two other people address it.

Go read the thread. Read my posts here. It has been answered.

Here is the link to the other thread AGAIN: debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=497506#497506

On a final note, you once again refused to answer my original questions about your claims/opinion/idea/belief that you "choose your priorities and values". The dodging and avoidance does not go unnoticed.

[Mithrae]

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

It seems a little simplistic to automatically appeal to an infinite regression here. Seems to me we have basic evolutionary drives or predispositions; primarily to survive, to interact and prosper socially, and to leave a (usually genetic) legacy. We have ongoing bodily desires or responses building on or facilitating those; hunger, tiredness, fear, pain, lust and so on. And there are also notions like 'happiness,' 'beauty,' 'ambition, 'ethics' and so on which are considerably more abstract and highly variable from person to person and culture to culture.

It seems evident that what Cnorman was talking about is more along the lines of that third group rather than either of the first two. And it also seems obvious that for an individual to develop her own particular nuances of those more abstract values - since they are neither genetic nor homogenous - there would have to be some process of interpretation, perhaps adaption, and ultimately integration of those abstract values as seen in her culture through the lens of her own experience. A process which needn't end at any particular age.

You participated in EduChris' thread in the Philosophy forum (Volitional Non-contingent Reality?), though I'm not sure you were still reading when I considered and explained this view. But it seems to me that either Cnorman is correct, and you are trying to reduce the discussion into a question of 'free will,' somewhat implied by your claim of a consensus amongst neuroscientists... or else it's obvious that our day-to-day and year-to-year choices, experiences and contemplations have a huge effect on which abstract values and priorities we endorse or modify from society.

[cnorman18]

If religious belief were always and forever nothing more than a matter of making claims of objective fact about the Universe, then it would not and could not be a "choice." It would be a guess or a hope at best, at worst an assumption or even a delusion.

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

In short, Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -your-will

I enjoyed the article, but I have to wonder if you actually read all of it.

Starting off with personal accusations? Did i somehow provoke such a response with my previous post or is this par for the course with you?

As for the rest -- sorry, but -- without prejudice toward any of the issues raised by anyone here -- like I said, I'm not interested in this conversation.

For the record, I don't think that I have made any "claims," but only stated my opinions -- though I have asked an implicit (though obvious) question myself which YOU have not answered:

"Till someone can show me the PRACTICAL difference, in my own life, between my actually having free will and the enormous, overwhelming, continuous, and invariably consistent "illusion" that I do, I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it."

Can you show me any such practical difference?

I have addressed this twice and twice you have ignored it. In my previous response I linked to the thread where I and two other people address it.

Go read the thread. Read my posts here. It has been answered.

No, it hasn’t. See below.

Here is the link to the other thread AGAIN: debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=497506#497506

Thanks for posting the link again. The first time, it didn’t work.

In that thread, you did NOT give any practical differences between the existence and nonexistence of free will; you merely posted a list of areas where it MIGHT, theoretically and in reference to nothing at all specific, have an effect.

1) criminal justice
2) responsibility
3) social justice
4) personal accomplishment

You might as well have posted

Traffic laws
Charities
Economic policy
TV award shows

Unless you can give specific examples of how the absence or nonexistence of free will affects those things, you have shown NO differences. That is what “practical� means.

Further down in that same post, you reference Daniel Dennett as if his thinking supports your own. If that is the case, we are talking past each other. From the Wikipedia article:

“The model of decision making I am proposing has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision.�

...Dennett defends this model for the following reasons:

“First...The intelligent selection, rejection, and weighing of the considerations that do occur to the subject is a matter of intelligence making the difference.
“Second, I think it installs indeterminism in the right place for the libertarian, if there is a right place at all.
“Third...from the point of view of biological engineering, it is just more efficient and in the end more rational that decision making should occur in this way.
“A fourth observation in favor of the model is that it permits moral education to make a difference, without making all of the difference.
“Fifth — and I think this is perhaps the most important thing to be said in favor of this model — it provides some account of our important intuition that we are the authors of our moral decisions.
“Finally, the model I propose points to the multiplicity of decisions that encircle our moral decisions and suggests that in many cases our ultimate decision as to which way to act is less important phenomenologically as a contributor to our sense of free will than the prior decisions affecting our deliberation process itself: the decision, for instance, not to consider any further, to terminate deliberation; or the decision to ignore certain lines of inquiry.
“These prior and subsidiary decisions contribute, I think, to our sense of ourselves as responsible free agents, roughly in the following way: I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: "That's enough. I've considered this matter enough and now I'm going to act," in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.�

I have no problem with any of that at all, and in fact I agree with it. If you do as well, what’s the problem?

On a final note, you once again refused to answer my original questions about your claims/opinion/idea/belief that you "choose your priorities and values". The dodging and avoidance does not go unnoticed.

Neither do your personal attacks and gibes. “A lack of interest� is not the same as “avoidance� or “dodging.�

To answer your question, I choose my personal priorities and values in much the same manner as described by Dennett (and see also the post immediately following your own, from Mithrae). SOME aspects of those choices are “determined,� if you like, by my upbringing and experiences; that is rather clearly not the same as saying that they are entirely predetermined with no input from me. If that isn’t what you’re arguing, then as I said, we’re talking past each other.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever said or proposed that “free will� entails TOTAL freedom of choice, wherein the choices are not affected by ANYTHING external to the agent. Such a situation does not and cannot, in the real world, exist. Acknowleding that FACT is very different from the leap to total determinism, which is the usual position of those who reject the concept of free will around here. If that isn’t your position, my apologies.

May I choose to ignore this debate now, free of having to defend myself against your attacks and assumptions? I REALLY have no interest in it.

[cnorman18]

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

It seems a little simplistic to automatically appeal to an infinite regression here. Seems to me we have basic evolutionary drives or predispositions; primarily to survive, to interact and prosper socially, and to leave a (usually genetic) legacy. We have ongoing bodily desires or responses building on or facilitating those; hunger, tiredness, fear, pain, lust and so on. And there are also notions like 'happiness,' 'beauty,' 'ambition, 'ethics' and so on which are considerably more abstract and highly variable from person to person and culture to culture.

It seems evident that what Cnorman was talking about is more along the lines of that third group rather than either of the first two. And it also seems obvious that for an individual to develop her own particular nuances of those more abstract values - since they are neither genetic nor homogenous - there would have to be some process of interpretation, perhaps adaption, and ultimately integration of those abstract values as seen in her culture through the lens of her own experience. A process which needn't end at any particular age.

You participated in EduChris' thread in the Philosophy forum (Volitional Non-contingent Reality?), though I'm not sure you were still reading when I considered and explained this view. But it seems to me that either Cnorman is correct, and you are trying to reduce the discussion into a question of 'free will,' somewhat implied by your claim of a consensus amongst neuroscientists... or else it's obvious that our day-to-day and year-to-year choices, experiences and contemplations have a huge effect on which abstract values and priorities we endorse or modify from society.

Thank you. Very well said, and in my opinion entirely correct.

Seems to me that the position presented here is that "this thread is only about free will if you don't agree with me that there is obviously no such thing," and that seems to me to be a pretty extreme example of "begging the question."

[scourge99]

If religious belief were always and forever nothing more than a matter of making claims of objective fact about the Universe, then it would not and could not be a "choice." It would be a guess or a hope at best, at worst an assumption or even a delusion.

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

In short, Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -your-will

I enjoyed the article, but I have to wonder if you actually read all of it.

Starting off with personal accusations? Did i somehow provoke such a response with my previous post or is this par for the course with you?

As for the rest -- sorry, but -- without prejudice toward any of the issues raised by anyone here -- like I said, I'm not interested in this conversation.

For the record, I don't think that I have made any "claims," but only stated my opinions -- though I have asked an implicit (though obvious) question myself which YOU have not answered:

"Till someone can show me the PRACTICAL difference, in my own life, between my actually having free will and the enormous, overwhelming, continuous, and invariably consistent "illusion" that I do, I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it."

Can you show me any such practical difference?

I have addressed this twice and twice you have ignored it. In my previous response I linked to the thread where I and two other people address it.

Go read the thread. Read my posts here. It has been answered.

No, it hasn’t. See below.

Yes it has. See the links.

That you are personally incredulous to what has been presented does not mean that your claims and assertions have not been addressed.

Here is the link to the other thread AGAIN: debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=497506#497506

Thanks for posting the link again. The first time, it didn’t work.

In that thread, you did NOT give any practical differences between the existence and nonexistence of free will; you merely posted a list of areas where it MIGHT, theoretically and in reference to nothing at all specific, have an effect.

1) criminal justice
2) responsibility
3) social justice
4) personal accomplishment

You might as well have posted

Traffic laws
Charities
Economic policy
TV award shows

Unless you can give specific examples of how the absence or nonexistence of free will affects those things, you have shown NO differences. That is what “practical� means.

You were so arrogant and pompous that strutted in declaring the whole subject a giant waste of time unless someone gave you reason to believe otherwise. I accepted your challenge and gave some examples. But now you are shifting the goals posts. Now you demand a complete and full explanation of each.

Are you honestly curious about these examples or is this just a desperate act to save face? Keep in mind that entire books have been written on this subject.

Further down in that same post, you reference Daniel Dennett as if his thinking supports your own. If that is the case, we are talking past each other. From the Wikipedia article:

“The model of decision making I am proposing has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision.�

...Dennett defends this model for the following reasons:

“First...The intelligent selection, rejection, and weighing of the considerations that do occur to the subject is a matter of intelligence making the difference.
“Second, I think it installs indeterminism in the right place for the libertarian, if there is a right place at all.
“Third...from the point of view of biological engineering, it is just more efficient and in the end more rational that decision making should occur in this way.
“A fourth observation in favor of the model is that it permits moral education to make a difference, without making all of the difference.
“Fifth — and I think this is perhaps the most important thing to be said in favor of this model — it provides some account of our important intuition that we are the authors of our moral decisions.
“Finally, the model I propose points to the multiplicity of decisions that encircle our moral decisions and suggests that in many cases our ultimate decision as to which way to act is less important phenomenologically as a contributor to our sense of free will than the prior decisions affecting our deliberation process itself: the decision, for instance, not to consider any further, to terminate deliberation; or the decision to ignore certain lines of inquiry.
“These prior and subsidiary decisions contribute, I think, to our sense of ourselves as responsible free agents, roughly in the following way: I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: "That's enough. I've considered this matter enough and now I'm going to act," in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.�

I have no problem with any of that at all, and in fact I agree with it. If you do as well, what’s the problem?

I don't see how this addresses anything in regards to the problems I find with what you have claimed. Your claims being:
1) Values and priorities by which one lives are a matter of choice. ( The context being that religious belief is a matter of values and priorities and thus religious belief is a matter of choice ).
2) The existence of non-existence of freewill has absolutely zero practical consequences.

“A lack of interest� is not the same as “avoidance� or “dodging.�

That depends on what the meaning of "is" is.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... of_is.html

To answer your question, I choose my personal priorities and values in much the same manner as described by Dennett (and see also the post immediately following your own, from Mithrae).

Are you compatibilist?

SOME aspects of those choices are “determined,� if you like, by my upbringing and experiences; that is rather clearly not the same as saying that they are entirely predetermined with no input from me.

If you are compatibilist (as Dennet is) then your choices aren't predetermined (if randomness exists), but they certainly are deterministic. Your "choices" are determined by the situation.

In short, compatibilists have redefined freewill. Its merely determinism wearing a different colored hat. Or, as Sam Harris describes the "freedom" of compatibilism: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free ... -free-will

If that isn’t what you’re arguing, then as I said, we’re talking past each other.

I'm not quite sure you actually understand what compatibilism is. If you do then your claim that you choose your values and priorities is incompatible with your compatiblism (or there is some word-play going on with the term "choose" and "freewill").

No one, to my knowledge, has ever said or proposed that “free will� entails TOTAL freedom of choice, wherein the choices are not affected by ANYTHING external to the agent.

I agree.

Such a situation does not and cannot, in the real world, exist. Acknowleding that FACT is very different from the leap to total determinism, which is the usual position of those who reject the concept of free will around here. If that isn’t your position, my apologies.

I am a determinist but not a strict determinist. That is, I see no third option to the dilemma of determinism. I believe our world is either completely deterministic, or its deterministic to an extent but there is some randomness to it. In either case there is no room for "genuine choice" or "genuine freewill".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilemma_of_determinism

The dilemma of determinism or problem of free will is the claim that if determinism is true, our actions are controlled by preceding events and thus we are not free; and that if indeterminism is true, our actions are random and we are likewise not free; and that as determinism and indeterminism exhaust the logical possibilities,[1] free will is thus logically impossible.

For this reason I think you misunderstand exactly what Dennet is saying. Like most people, I think you believe that there is some third option to the dilemma. That there is some magical "freewill" that lets you "choose" that isn't the result of randomness or determined by preceding events. Some illusory libertarian notion of freewill. But I'll have to wait for your response to see if I am on the right track.

May I choose to ignore this debate now, free of having to defend myself against your attacks and assumptions? I REALLY have no interest in it.

You've left a lot of unanswered questions. Its your prerogative whether to leave them unanswered or not.

I would be most appreciative if you provided a response. Or at a minimum, cleared up the questions I have regarding your compatibilism (or lack thereof).

[Mithrae]

I am a determinist but not a strict determinist. That is, I see no third option to the dilemma of determinism. I believe our world is either completely deterministic, or its deterministic to an extent but there is some randomness to it. In either case there is no room for "genuine choice" or "genuine freewill".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilemma_of_determinism

The dilemma of determinism or problem of free will is the claim that if determinism is true, our actions are controlled by preceding events and thus we are not free; and that if indeterminism is true, our actions are random and we are likewise not free; and that as determinism and indeterminism exhaust the logical possibilities,[1] free will is thus logically impossible.

For this reason I think you misunderstand exactly what Dennet is saying. Like most people, I think you believe that there is some third option to the dilemma. That there is some magical "freewill" that lets you "choose" that isn't the result of randomness or determined by preceding events. Some illusory libertarian notion of freewill. But I'll have to wait for your response to see if I am on the right track.

The experience of somewhat free choice is simply that we could have chosen otherwise.

The idea of determinism is that the effect could not have been otherwise.

Unfortunately it's impossible to show empirically that the effect of a particular set of circumstances could not have been otherwise, since it would require rewinding time, and as far as I'm aware there's no logical proof for the idea either. It's a very useful way of thinking about things' behaviour (at least above the atomic level), but as far as I'm aware it has not (and cannot be) proven that anything's behaviour could not have been otherwise.

Given that, on face value it looks like a slightly flawed dilemma

[cnorman18]

(Sigh.)

If religious belief were always and forever nothing more than a matter of making claims of objective fact about the Universe, then it would not and could not be a "choice." It would be a guess or a hope at best, at worst an assumption or even a delusion.

If, on the other hand, religious belief is a matter of the values and priorities by which one lives, it IS a choice, and further, a choice which must be renewed every day.

Did you choose your priorities and values or are they more like uncontrollable and spontaneous part of your character and being?

What keeps your from having different priorities or values? Is that under your control? Is that a choice?

If you consciously choose your values and priorities then can you explain the basis by which you chose the values and priorities you did? Can you then explain the basis of the basis by which you made the chose the values and priorities you did? And so on and so forth.... This leads to an infinite regression or eventually our choices boil down to factors beyond our ability to choose or control. Thus, at our core we do not really choose. We certainly do deliberate and think (and in that sense we have the sensation of "choosing"; and as Dennet would say, that is the only form of freewill worth having) but it does not appear that we have any control over what we choose.

In short, Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... -your-will

I enjoyed the article, but I have to wonder if you actually read all of it.

Starting off with personal accusations? Did i somehow provoke such a response with my previous post or is this par for the course with you?

As for the rest -- sorry, but -- without prejudice toward any of the issues raised by anyone here -- like I said, I'm not interested in this conversation.

For the record, I don't think that I have made any "claims," but only stated my opinions -- though I have asked an implicit (though obvious) question myself which YOU have not answered:

"Till someone can show me the PRACTICAL difference, in my own life, between my actually having free will and the enormous, overwhelming, continuous, and invariably consistent "illusion" that I do, I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it."

Can you show me any such practical difference?

I have addressed this twice and twice you have ignored it. In my previous response I linked to the thread where I and two other people address it.

Go read the thread. Read my posts here. It has been answered.

No, it hasn’t. See below.

Yes it has. See the links.

That you are personally incredulous to what has been presented does not mean that your claims and assertions have not been addressed.

Here is the link to the other thread AGAIN: debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=497506#497506

Thanks for posting the link again. The first time, it didn’t work.

In that thread, you did NOT give any practical differences between the existence and nonexistence of free will; you merely posted a list of areas where it MIGHT, theoretically and in reference to nothing at all specific, have an effect.

1) criminal justice
2) responsibility
3) social justice
4) personal accomplishment

You might as well have posted

Traffic laws
Charities
Economic policy
TV award shows

Unless you can give specific examples of how the absence or nonexistence of free will affects those things, you have shown NO differences. That is what “practical� means.

You were so arrogant and pompous that strutted in declaring the whole subject a giant waste of time unless someone gave you reason to believe otherwise.

Personal attacks and insults noted.

I "strutted" nowhere, and never indicated that these topics ought not be discussed; I said only that "I regard that particular debate as a waste of time -- and I CHOOSE not to engage in it." I have said similar things about professional sports and hanging out in bars. If you saw some denigration of those who DO choose to participate in those activities as well as those who choose to debate on this subject, that is your inferral, not my implication.

I enjoy debate; I do not enjoy defending myself against unwarranted and unprovoked attacks. I'm not interested in this subject; why do you regard that as some sort of insult or arrogance or provocation? I collect walking sticks; do you think I would be insulted and outraged if you told me you didn't much care about walking sticks?

I accepted your challenge and gave some examples. But now you are shifting the goals posts. Now you demand a complete and full explanation of each.

I have moved no goalposts. I asked that someone show me a "PRACTICAL" difference between having and not having free will in my first post on this subject. Vague allusions to various fields is hardly showing anyone a "PRACTICAL" difference.

Are you honestly curious about these examples or is this just a desperate act to save face? Keep in mind that entire books have been written on this subject.

You might say I'm "curious" in that I see no explanation of how any of these areas would be affected, in PRACTICAL terms, by the existence or nonexistence of free will. The fact that you ask whether I'm "curious" would seem to indicate that you agree that the examples given contained no such content.

Further -- how can I possibly be "desperate" about an issue about which I don't give a rat's butt?

Further down in that same post, you reference Daniel Dennett as if his thinking supports your own. If that is the case, we are talking past each other. From the Wikipedia article:

“The model of decision making I am proposing has the following feature: when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision.�

...Dennett defends this model for the following reasons:

“First...The intelligent selection, rejection, and weighing of the considerations that do occur to the subject is a matter of intelligence making the difference.
“Second, I think it installs indeterminism in the right place for the libertarian, if there is a right place at all.
“Third...from the point of view of biological engineering, it is just more efficient and in the end more rational that decision making should occur in this way.
“A fourth observation in favor of the model is that it permits moral education to make a difference, without making all of the difference.
“Fifth — and I think this is perhaps the most important thing to be said in favor of this model — it provides some account of our important intuition that we are the authors of our moral decisions.
“Finally, the model I propose points to the multiplicity of decisions that encircle our moral decisions and suggests that in many cases our ultimate decision as to which way to act is less important phenomenologically as a contributor to our sense of free will than the prior decisions affecting our deliberation process itself: the decision, for instance, not to consider any further, to terminate deliberation; or the decision to ignore certain lines of inquiry.
“These prior and subsidiary decisions contribute, I think, to our sense of ourselves as responsible free agents, roughly in the following way: I am faced with an important decision to make, and after a certain amount of deliberation, I say to myself: "That's enough. I've considered this matter enough and now I'm going to act," in the full knowledge that I could have considered further, in the full knowledge that the eventualities may prove that I decided in error, but with the acceptance of responsibility in any case.�

I have no problem with any of that at all, and in fact I agree with it. If you do as well, what’s the problem?

I don't see how this addresses anything in regards to the problems I find with what you have claimed. Your claims being:
1) Values and priorities by which one lives are a matter of choice. ( The context being that religious belief is a matter of values and priorities and thus religious belief is a matter of choice ).

I think the highlighted passages explain how that passage addresses that question.

2) The existence of non-existence of freewill has absolutely zero practical consequences.

Read more carefully. I never said that. What I HAVE said is that no one has demonstrated that its existence or nonexistence makes a difference. That distinction is not trivial; I don't think it has been, or can be, determined whether free will exists or not; and therefore such a difference cannot be demonstrated.

“A lack of interest� is not the same as “avoidance� or “dodging.�

That depends on what the meaning of "is" is.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... of_is.html

Give me a break. I'm not interested in this issue; it has no importance to me. If I do not answer a question of yours, it is most probably because I see no upside in digging through references and carefully phrasing responses and continuing to DEBATE on something that I DON'T CARE ABOUT. That's not "avoiding" anything; that's apathy, or indifference, if you like.

To answer your question, I choose my personal priorities and values in much the same manner as described by Dennett (and see also the post immediately following your own, from Mithrae).

Are you compatibilist?

I don't care to spend the time looking up scholarly articles and studying these concepts and considering long enough to finally decide which hoop I want to jump through, thanks. I think I've made my position clear enough -- for ME, at least. If it's not clear enough for you, that's YOUR problem.

SOME aspects of those choices are “determined,� if you like, by my upbringing and experiences; that is rather clearly not the same as saying that they are entirely predetermined with no input from me.

If you are compatibilist (as Dennet is) then your choices aren't predetermined (if randomness exists), but they certainly are deterministic. Your "choices" are determined by the situation.

I think I've already conceded that:

SOME aspects of those choices are “determined,� if you like, by my upbringing and experiences; that is rather clearly not the same as saying that they are entirely predetermined with no input from me.

If you are saying that our choices are ENTIRELY determined by prior circumstances, it seems to me that you don't agree with Dennett; see the highlighted passages in the quote above.

In short, compatibilists have redefined freewill. Its merely determinism wearing a different colored hat. Or, as Sam Harris describes the "freedom" of compatibilism: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free ... -free-will

If that isn’t what you’re arguing, then as I said, we’re talking past each other.

I'm not quite sure you actually understand what compatibilism is. If you do then your claim that you choose your values and priorities is incompatible with your compatiblism (or there is some word-play going on with the term "choose" and "freewill").

I think you're basically proving what I've thought all along here, and is among the reasons that I have no interest in this debate; that this is more a matter of words and definitions and semantics than of practical fact.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever said or proposed that “free will� entails TOTAL freedom of choice, wherein the choices are not affected by ANYTHING external to the agent.

I agree.

THEN WHAT ARE WE ARGUING ABOUT?!?

Such a situation does not and cannot, in the real world, exist. Acknowleding that FACT is very different from the leap to total determinism, which is the usual position of those who reject the concept of free will around here. If that isn’t your position, my apologies.

I am a determinist but not a strict determinist.

Fine. So am I. Happy now?

That is, I see no third option to the dilemma of determinism. I believe our world is either completely deterministic, or its deterministic to an extent but there is some randomness to it. In either case there is no room for "genuine choice" or "genuine freewill".

Then to my thinking, you are a "strict determinist."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilemma_of_determinism

The dilemma of determinism or problem of free will is the claim that if determinism is true, our actions are controlled by preceding events and thus we are not free; and that if indeterminism is true, our actions are random and we are likewise not free; and that as determinism and indeterminism exhaust the logical possibilities,[1] free will is thus logically impossible.

For this reason I think you misunderstand exactly what Dennet is saying. Like most people, I think you believe that there is some third option to the dilemma. That there is some magical "freewill" that lets you "choose" that isn't the result of randomness or determined by preceding events. Some illusory libertarian notion of freewill. But I'll have to wait for your response to see if I am on the right track.

Pretending, once again, that I care:

If Dennett doesn't believe that "the agent" has any input at all into the decision-making process, what explains all the highlighted quotes above, especially "The intelligent selection, rejection, and weighing of the considerations that do occur to the subject is a matter of intelligence making the difference."?

May I choose to ignore this debate now, free of having to defend myself against your attacks and assumptions? I REALLY have no interest in it.

You've left a lot of unanswered questions. Its your prerogative whether to leave them unanswered or not.

I choose to leave them unanswered. Okay? I choose to leave them unanswered because I, personally, am not interested in them and see no practical importance to them in my own life. Note, once again, that I do not say that OTHERS may not discuss and debate them to their heart's content; I don't say that these questions ought not be talked about, but only that I'M NOT INTERESTED IN THEM, and I don't know of any law or imperative or ethic that says that I HAVE TO BE.

I would be most appreciative if you provided a response. Or at a minimum, cleared up the questions I have regarding your compatibilism (or lack thereof).

I would be most appreciative if you could address me without indulging in personal attacks and insults.