Tomas Schutz 1 August 2023

This article still doesn't address origin of your desires and autonomy! I found all previous articles on Free Will from IAI erroneous and give closest word i could find argument which is modal fallacy (when validity of an argument is judged without omitting its premises or conlusions). I also find most scientists/philosophers really having no idea about Free Will and give logically fallacious arguments... Which is most important thing! Nietzsche said to change one's fate you would have to change everything that was before (whole history), as everything is one whole. And called causa sui rape of logic and nonsense from this reason... Note: there is 2 interpretations of causa sui 1. Metaphysical: that one causes itself into being (this is what Galen Strawson argues for, which Nietzsche called rape of logic), even this has 2 sub-types: a) one can do everything metaphysically possible which even physical laws don't allow, like flying yourself by thinking it, which is nonsense! And b) one would have to cause origin of his desires, e.g. cause itself to existence, yet preceding its own existence, which seems logically impossible! Therefore we don't necessarily come into paradox, but this is logical proof that it is impossible to do so! But we also don't know nature of consciousness and don't have definition of will, so it may not encompass all possibilities there are i.e. logical fallacy... 2. Causa Sui is something of which action originated, and origin of an action cannot be traced to anything but itself, which doesn't seem the case, as everything is in relation! There is argument that Nietzsche misunderstand this interpretation of Causa Sui, but I don't think so, because there is no account of this being possible: maverickph ilosopher.typepad. com/maverick_philosopher/2009/05/nietzsche-on-causa-sui-and-free-will. html I don't understand why it would be so easy to figure out, life without free will turns into hell, even true freedom is in power and in moment (flow) - Nietzsche. Hopefully it is unprovable, so there are ppl which will always believe it... Truth != good... Free will is absurd, there is just will and even that may be only epiphenomenon. We have no definition of will... While I knew that, it is absurd! Because either imagination, or less language which describes these images can describe reality as it is! So if we had free will, we couldn't even know it and what is more absurd it would appear to us that we don't have it! Could one become unfree, from his own free will? OK where i was, i can't prove it is illusion, but biggest geniuses in history thought so... Most ppl don't want to believe it and most ppl even high IQ (it doesn't protect vs biases and dysrationalia) want to believe it, because otherwise they could never feel sense of achievement and pleasure if they succeed and would become depressed, life strives to hide truths which are not beneficial for survival... As Nietzsche said also, there is empirical evidence it is the case! So we cannot even prove/disprove it like with anything, but it is still useful to research all avenues... My problem with desires, is even if future is open to any decision, where it would come from. It is not like you can make any decision at any exact moment, e.g. if you don't know any better, we are rationally bounded, act on imperfect knowledge. Your self is not exempt from your environment which no one chooses! Like what you had parents, it establishes your personality and values for most ppl and you didn't choose these either... Also if we had free will, which ones would be freeer? How it would be determined where other ppl can impend our free will, which will prevail? Also it was proven that ppl, give false reasons for doing something retrospectively, after they are asked later and it is not only snap second decisions (reflexes)! How can you have free will, if you don't even know true reasons for why you did something? And even if we use philosophical concept of character development, at time in past when you make some decisions you didn't know to which it will lead in future, but we can make case, that if ppl know ahead what it will lead to if they make these decisions vs those to form their character they would choose otherwise... There is probably only will and again even that might be just epiphenomena, it is really depressing yeah! But i am sick and i was too deep in abyss, so i need to just know, otherwise i wouldn't want to know this... Like multitude of forces, even intelligence might be illusion, of what we think it is... What if i am boltzman brain? Most of these theories come short I claim because 99.999% are not even strong enough to see the truth... “The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”. Even this might be too much truth... But what is everything is god and i am all of this? DOes it really matter? It didn't matter to me when i was in moment, that fw is illusion! When i was interacting with other ppl and i felt sublime! As Nietzsche said about antromorphisms, metonyms and ego... We need to do away with bad language... We just basically started to study this... That we care about free will is sickness in the first place, i am not fully healed yet, so i can't explain this to you but read Beyond Good and Evil!

And one quote for the end :D

“Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years, past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit - an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility - the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one’s soul with all of this - the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling - this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fishermen is still rowing with golden oars! This godlike feeling would then be called - humaneness.”

Mahmoud Yacout 20 May 2023

The author assumes that desiring is the same as choosing, that I find a flawed assumption. Assuming that a desire emerges out of some random electrical activity in the brain, so here we are, doomed to do something we didn't choose because of the randomness of the universe. We all desire lots and lots of things, but doing or choosing to follow a desire is something else in my opinion. It is just not that simple, unfortunately. We all have these moments in our lives where we are faced with a choice, whether a hard or an easy one, and sometimes we choose something that's not in accordance with what we desire. Other times we choose something and have regrets afterwards, and then get back to the starting point and choose a different path. I am not giving here a final answer to the debate of free will, but just saying that abstracting the human mind in the way the author did is not right.
The author also refers to the non deterministic nature of the universe, viewed from the perspective of quantum mechanics, as being random, while it could also be viewed as a universe with multiple probabilities or a "multiple choice" universe. Or may be our brains exploit this randomness to create a free or semifree Will!

Michael Walker 12 May 2023

Interesting indeed.