In Defense of Freewill and Logic

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Determinism Fails to Grasp Freewill (Or Should I Say a Determinist or Two Does?) · When Watching the Same Video · New blog on the kid: In Defense of Freewill and Logic

On a debate, I came across this tirade. My answer, so far, was a bit lame. I'll try to make up for it by a more detailed answer.

The reason ARE my choices, but what is the reason for my choices? No. Potentials are imaginary what ifs, reality only exists in one way from what we understand. Even if we invoke quantum physics and the multiverse reality exists in one single way within this particular timeline. Reality's "worldview" is deterministic, and you are the one confusing your own false worldview with reality. You always are "the kind of person" who choses to do an action, or you never act, and that may be an action on of its own. A homosexual is not the kind of person who choses sodomy, a sodomist is. A cleptomaniac is not the kind of person who choses stealing, a shief is. Here is the thing, we operate on reason, if you have homosexuality that is a reason for "sodomy" and in the absense of reason against it the act is inevitable. In the presence of reasons for and against it the stronger reason prevails, and when both reasons are equally strong its randomness and not any meaningful free will. Except that is the definition of rationality, perhaps your retionality does not seek to find out the truth but that would not be rationality in my opinion. Cause-effect is part of surroundings. If i poke a lion, humans like any other animal are utterly bound to evolution. Or at least materially, if there is a soul it seems to also operate within the constrains of instincts while it inhabits a body, before leaving it in order to enter another. Which we do have some scientific evidences for, its not like all of science rejects spirituality and there are absolutely no evidences for such things. For the most part it seems that way but there is one exception: We have a pretty good database of potential reincarnation cases. If its free to follow rationality that means its free not to, so why would it? Wrong and irrational are synonymous, people can act irrationally when they are ignorant, so there is not enough data to calculate the best path based on the available resources. But yet again, why should we follow rationality instead of irrational thoughts or impulses if we are free to choose? Rationality extends to emotions too, its rational to do what feels right to you. Even cases where a rational thought is rejected in favor of irrational emotions, that is still influences by which cause acts more strongly within an organism. Its literally called reason, its the path of following reasons, that is calculating potential outcome, that is determinism in action. Your action is determined by reason, your reason by data. And seeking pleasure is deterministic. Domination is to a great degree an illusion, similarly to free will. Its about what we have, we have data for determinism, we have no reason to exclude humans from the way we have studied that the world works. AND ITS MOSTLY LOGIC THAT CONTRADICTS FREE WILL, not any claim that we know how the world works to a perfection. Well no, we know we are not free. Feeling a subjective choice is being made does not equal an objective reality. You can logically prove it is an illusion, if you do not invoke quantum physics. But randomness is chaos, randomness is NOT free will. So free will has literally been debunked, maybe where you stand you cannot see it, but i see it clearly as anything. Its not a matter of belief, perhaps as a human you are inevitably bound to clinging onto such ideas, maybe your brain struggles to comprehead the true nature of reality, or perhaps your primal absolute fear that is the terror of death has led you to push towards a worldview where that event does not spell annihilation, but that is simply nature, and perhaps you have grown up in a household where you have been trained to believe in a particular sets of beliefs, thus leading to your attemt to justify them, which is nurture. Either way, in the absense of a supernatural factor operating on entirely different logic than the materium, i cannot account for free will in the calculation. Yah we do. Logic dictates causality, something cannot be born from nothing. What we ask here is what the reason is behind the subject choosing so, not what the reason for the action they chose is. Yes. Yes we are. They may or may not be material, but they use material tools for the material world, like logic, which your imaginary free will contradicts sharply and severely.

Logic is not material. Matter reflects logic, because no configuration of matter can be such that an accurate description of it would contradict logic. This is sometimes used in computers to simulate logic. But computer logic is not logic. Computer logic is not how we do logic, comprehension is. Precisely as with translations, also a thing computer's can't do.

Freewill does not contradict logic.

It only contradicts the pseudologic of "if this was the actual future of x, then no other could be true" (spoken of the retrospect) "therefore" (no!) "no other future was ever an option" (does not follow). The necessity of an enunciation does not mean that the thing enounced happened from necessity, some enunciations are necessarily true from the fact of knowledge rather than the fact of previous necessity.

The reality may only exist in one way, but this is not automatically of necessity. Some potentialities are not realised. If an egg is picked for breakfast, it can never thereafter hatch, but previous to it's being picked by the farmer, it could have remained there and become a chicken.

"we have data for determinism,"

Not the least. We have data for some causes causing in deterministic fashion, i e not having any freewilled control over their outcomes. Electromagnetic fields of certain strengths and directions will work in certain ways, unless counteracted or turned off. As long as the electromagnetic field is there, it has no free control over what it causes. But in each such experiment, very obviously free will is involved in the people doing the experiment.

"we have no reason to exclude humans from the way we have studied that the world works."

We most certainly do. We know we know things. We don't know, and we have all reason not to believe, that electromagnetic fields know things. We know we can snap a finger or not snap a finger. We have no reason to believe an electromagnetic field has any choice.

This makes the study of ourselves radically different from a study of an electromagnetic fields.

Even apart from ourselves, we have no reason to believe the universe overall is deterministic like electromagnetic fields rather then at least partly and in some detail perhaps wholly guided by free wills differring from electromagnetic fields like our own. Even with lightnings, while as a Christian I don't believe precisely in Thor or Perun, that is, I would not deem them worthy of worship, I don't think Benjamin Franklin has disproven them.

You could claim the electric charges in the cloud sooner or later had to be released, I agree. But if you continue to say "and exactly when, that was also predetermined" I disagree. It's clearly within the works of normal providence, rather than obvious miracle, for God to make a lightning break 5 minutes sooner or later than it otherwise might have broken. Or one km further here or there, than otherwise. It's clearly a thing angelic beings could bring about too, and that might include fallen ones, indeed, those of the atmosphere seem to be precisely that, according to St. Paul (a good reason not to worship Thor!). It doesn't take all that much tampering. How quickly the lightning strikes depends on how quickly the electric charges build up. That would depend, among other things, on friction, which is increased by density (I think), and the density would depend on the thickness of the cloud. Given angels have powers to move objects other than by already existing physical vectors, tampering with that would be "child's play" for a demon or occasionally angel. The good angels acting usually on God's orders, the demons with His permission.

So, no, even on so close an item as the weather, we have no direct evidence (unless we bring such into it by your twisted logic) for complete determinism. Astronomy, well, the patterns are very clearly reoccurring very regularly, but whether this is due to an inherent necessity or to some free willed agency, does not immediately appear from the regularity. The direct evidence we have when we look up is for Geocentrism with planetary patterns as introcate as spirograph patterns. And that seems closer to the work of a dancer or a dance ballet than of gravitational orbits.

Some might find fault with my mentioning ballet, considering that Erik Bruhn was apparently the great love of Nureyev. Too bad, to me that makes the Bolshoi a bit less great. However, Benjamin Millepied has been married for soon twelve years to Natalie Portman or Herschlag. They seem to have children together. French Right Wing Catholics might do well not to be over-conscious in every issue of how Russians will take it, as if that were the be all and end all of all righteousness. My reflections on angelic dancers have never been specifically about Nureyev and Bruhn. Both of whom, unlike angels, were born as children of a disobedient first parent called Adam. This means, freewill has been reduced. It has not been annihilated.

So far, the ontological questions. But the debater has shown a deontological side, which I definitely do not like.

"Wrong and irrational are synonymous, people can act irrationally when they are ignorant, so there is not enough data to calculate the best path based on the available resources. But yet again, why should we follow rationality instead of irrational thoughts or impulses if we are free to choose?"

No, wrong and irrational are not synonymous. Not every error is irrational. The error of determinism has a tiny slip of logic, inside a cascade of nearly good logic around it.

But here, the determinist pretends his security* of making the right choice depends on necessity. If he were free to make the wrong choice, he would.

If someone else were free to make the wrong choice he would. How about not allowing someone else that freedom, then? Well, that seems to be the guy's rationale, and in case anyone accuses him of being too domineering, he can always pretend domination, like free will, is an illusion. Voilà l'ennemi.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris, Bpi
Saint Alexis Falconieri
17.II.2024

PS, if my own, on his* opinion wrong world view was the result of necessity, and every one is under necessity, that's precisely why anyone would ask how come his world view for some reason couldn't be the wrong one. It's a secularist version of Calvinistic determinism, it's an atheistic version of a black and virus infected TULIP's "Unconditional election" and "Irresistible grace" .../HGL

PPS, the ultimate spiritual roots of both Calvinism and modern Materialism are probably found here:

The only option in the royal inscriptions to elaborate the consequences of sinfuland wrong behavior of a king is obviously the depiction of the enemy king. So the Babylonian king is clearly depicted as the exact counterpart of Sennacherib. He has a bad character, he is not reliable and he commits evil acts. The moral judgment is clear – the Assyrian king is the darling of the gods because he fulfills their wishes and acts according to their regulations ...

https://www.academia.edu/42918410/Different_Sources_Different_Kings_The_Picture_of_the_Neo_Assyrian_King_in_Shigeo_Yamada_ed_NEO_ASSYRIAN_SOURCES_IN_CONTEXT_THEMATIC_STUDIES_OF_TEXTS_HISTORY_AND_CULTURE_SAAS_28_Helsinki_2018

* Or her, but the character seems to suffer of an overdose of testosterone.