True randomness claims that a physical state updates without a determining cause. It claims that when a physical coordinate changes its value, no antecedent rule or prior condition forced that specific outcome.

For randomness to exist in reality, a physical change must happen without any physical driver choosing or producing the new state.

Every physical update is a change in numerical value at a specific coordinate within the continuous field.

When a coordinate transitions from an initial value to a subsequent value, only two possibilities exist:

(1) The transition is dictated by the prior physical state. The new value is the direct, necessary result of the existing values and their rules of interaction. Thus, the event is completely determined, not random.

(2) The transition is not dictated by the prior physical state. The outcome is uncaused. This means zero prior physical data produced the new value.

We must ask what produces a physical update when zero prior physical data is present?

If an event is completely uncaused, the new physical value must appear without any physical force driving it. Claiming that a value changes by pure chance claims that "nothing" selected or generated the new value.

(1) "Nothing" possesses zero physical properties. It has zero force, zero dimensions, and zero mathematical structure.

(2) Changing a physical value requires physical force and mathematical structure. An entity must act to alter a value at a coordinate.

Because "nothing" possesses zero physical properties, it cannot select a value. It cannot push a coordinate to a new intensity. It cannot compute a possibility.

Stating that a value changed by pure chance claims that "nothing" performed a physical action. But "nothing" cannot act. Expecting a non-existent entity to cause a physical change is a mechanical impossibility.

Thus, an uncaused event cannot occur. Every physical update must be entirely driven by an existing physical cause.

A random event claims that out of multiple potential values, a specific value appears without being derived from prior data.

(1) If the new value is derived from prior data, it is calculated by the existing system. Thus, it is determined. (2) If the new value is not derived from prior data, then brand-new physical data has entered the universe.

To add new physical data to the universe, that data must come from outside the total continuous field. But the continuous field contains everything that physically exists. Outside the continuous field is strictly "nothingness."

"Nothingness" contains zero data. Drawing physical data from a source that contains zero data is impossible.

Because new data cannot enter from "nothingness," and existing data cannot vanish into "nothingness," every subsequent physical state is a precise, necessary continuation of the previous state.

Because true randomness is a mechanical impossibility, we must explain why humans perceive events as random.

The human mind is a limited biological processor. It can only measure a tiny fraction of the mathematical data present in its environment.

When a human observes a complex physical update, the human lacks the complete data required to calculate the result. The biological brain cannot see the precise underlying causes driving the update.

The mind labels its own missing data as "chance" or "randomness."

"Randomness" does not exist as a physical property in the universe. It is strictly a biological formatting label used by the mind to summarise its own lack of information.

I haven't heard any convincing arguments for free will though I'm no philosopher and I wonder at what has been proposed.

A history lesson about how we got here.

First there was free will. An innate feeling, popularized by religion and culture, used to justify retribution for millennia. Then came the Enlightenment. The ancient Greeks had already sketched it out: Democritus and the atomist crowd. The Enlightenment just picked it up, polished it, refined it into a mechanical clockwork. Determinism described how the universe fundamentally works.

Societal agents, especially the Church, felt their golden goose was threatened, so they declared Determinism heresy. But the smartest minds couldn't deny the physics, so they embraced it. Laplace, d'Holbach, the whole materialist crew, they took it straight.

Others, the indecisive intellectuals, sidestepped the whole mess by claiming that even if Determinism were true, it doesn't actually threaten free will. Those are called compatibilists. Hume played that game. Schopenhauer too, in his own bitter way.

This indecisive position became the prevalent one among educated people, because it let them keep their moral outrage and their God in the gaps. There were more indecisives than honest thinkers, so Determinism couldn't shine among those circles, and it failed to bring any real change to the justice system. Retributive justice persisted because compatibilism had defanged Determinism. "So what if your actions are predetermined" — they said — "you still deserve to suffer either way".

Then Pereboom came on the scene. Living Without Free Will dropped in 2001. He declared: 'this is immoral'.

He decided to ditch the mess compatibilists turned Determinism into and build a new concept that defies moral retributivism without relying on Determinism at all.

It's called Hard Incompatibilism. He defined basic desert as the real core of retributive justice, and since then it's been the core issue, not free will.

If you think a person doesn't deserve to suffer just for what they are, you are first and foremost a hard incompatibilist. Everything else is secondary.

One thing I hear quite a lot on this sub, which massively surprised me at first, is that ordinary people tend to naturally be compatibilists. That they supposedly do not think freedom requires a categorical ability to do otherwise - they just mean acting according to their own desires without coercion etc.

A large cross-cultural study by Wisniewski, Deutschlander and Haynes gives us very good reason to doubt that.....https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617 (full text)

The study surveyed 1800 people in representative samples from the US and Singapore. Participants were asked whether they agreed with several different definitions of free will.

The clearest incompatibilist question was:

“Free will is the ability to make different choices even if everything leading up to one’s choice - the past, the situation, and their desires, beliefs, etc - were exactly the same.” - Just to point out that is not the conditional compatibilist ability to do otherwise of "you would have acted differently if you had wanted differently.”

It explicitly holds the past, circumstances, desires and beliefs fixed. It therefore describes something very close to the categorical ability to do otherwise.

Agreement was:

76.6% in the US

83.2% in Singapore

Most participants also endorsed an “unmoved mover” conception....“to have free will is to be able to cause things to happen in the world without at the same time being caused to make those things happen.”

Agreement was:

62% in the US

70.6% in Singapore

These libertarian responses were also positively related to general belief in free will. So this was not merely people recognising a possible definition while denying that humans possess it. The more strongly people believed in free will, the more likely they were to endorse these incompatibilist ideas.

The study also found some endorsement of supposedly compatibilist definitions. Eg "free will is the ability to make a choice based on one’s beliefs and desires such that, if one had different beliefs or desires, one’s choice would have been different as well.”

This was endorsed by 57% of Americans and 64% of Singaporeans.

Another item defined free will in terms of doing what one wants without coercion or constraint from other people. I was a bit surprised in that only 27% of Americans endorsed this, and 49% of Singaporeans.

But neither of these claims is uniquely compatibilist anyway. Ie a libertarian can perfectly consistently say that

free actions normally flow from the agent’s desires and reasons, that coercion can remove or reduce freedom, and the agent nevertheless retains a categorical ability to choose otherwise.

Acting according to your wants and being uncoerced are compatible with libertarianism. They only become distinctively compatibilist when someone adds that these conditions remain sufficient for free will even if the entire action was deterministically entailed. The survey items did not clearly establish that participants accepted that stronger compatibilist claim.

Also, get this - among participants classified as endorsing a compatibilist definition -  86.19% in the US **also** endorsed an incompatibilist definition and

92.29% in Singapore also endorsed an incompatibilist definition

My interpretation is that the participants did not regard the “compatibilist” questilns as rejecting libertarian freedom at all. Ie instead they may have thought that free action comes from their own desires, without coercion, and they also genuinely could have chosen otherwise with everything held fixed.

That is a recognisably libertarian picture, even though it incorporates capacities that compatibilists also value.

Most people in this study had explicit libertarian intuitions, while many also endorsed ordinary agency conditions shared by both compatibilists and libertarians. It seems compatibilists then just jump to "so folk intuitions are mixed and often philosophically incoherent, we can't really conclude a great deal" etc. This is just a rhetorical escape hatch- the compatibilist questions weren't incompatibilist-exclusive, libertarians endorse them too, so mixed endorsement is exactly what libertarians would expect.

The argument tends to be "no no, ordinary people do not normally think free will requires a categorical ability to do otherwise." But this study provides strong evidence against that claim (remember 76.6%/83.2% of participants believed this)

It does not prove that most people are philosophically sophisticated or internally consistent libertarians. But it does show that categorical “could have done otherwise” intuitions are widespread and probably central to many people’s conception of free will.

It also backs up the claim that I, and others on this sub have made, that ordinary people are implicit dualists.

In this study a large majority believed in some form of mind-body dualism...75.7% in the US & 88.3% in Singapore!

Most participants also agreed that an immaterial soul was necessary for free will....77.1% in the US & 82.8% in Singapore

Dualism was actually a stronger predictor of general free will belief than determinism beliefs were.....

I think this also helps the confused/mixed/inconsistent views people hold (such as endorsing libertarianism and determinism without realising the conflict). Ie the physical brain is causally governed while the real choosing self or soul stands partly outside that causal system.

So I don't think the folk view is...I act from my desires without coercion. It seems a lot closer to....my brain and circumstances influence me, but there is still a non-physical self that ultimately chooses and could genuinely have done otherwise. That is much closer to intuitive libertarianism than to standard naturalistic compatibilism.

Conclusion

Compatibilism does not reflect the ordinary persons views. Ordinary people overwhelmingly reject physicalism, causal closure if the physical, the denial of categorical alternatives. So compatibilism **is not** common sense! Its a revisionary theory designed to preserve moral responsibility under naturalism.

Ordinary people are not compatibilists!!!!

Hopefully someone reads all this as it took me fcking ages to write up haha.

Intrinsic Capacity (Free Will): The physical ability of an entity's own biological structure to generate an internal goal and execute physical movement.

Extrinsic Capacity (Freedom of Action): The presence of external physical tools, mechanisms, or open paths in the outside environment that allow an entity to alter its surroundings further.

A Rock: A rock possesses zero biological structures to form a goal. A rock also possesses zero physical capacity to move itself or build external tools. Because it lacks both intrinsic capacity and extrinsic capacity, a rock possesses zero free will.

A Human: A human is an indivisible biological structure that generates goals and executes movement. A human also possesses the physical potential to build and attach external tools, such as an aeroplane, to travel through the air.

Lacking an aeroplane does not remove a human's intrinsic capacity to choose flight. Free will belongs strictly to the total, indivisible biological system generating intent and action.

A lot of the free will debate seems to hinge on whether humans are the ultimate authors of their actions. If we're not, many conclude that agency is an illusion.

I'm not convinced that follows.

Here's the distinction I'm exploring.

Awareness is simply representing a difference.

I can be aware that I'm angry, aware that I'm self-sabotaging, or aware that my habits are damaging my relationships.

None of that necessarily changes anything.

Acknowledgment is different.

Acknowledgment occurs when what is represented becomes incorporated into the organisation producing future behaviour. In other words, the recognition is allowed to become causally effective.

A person may be aware they're drinking too much for years. Nothing changes.

Acknowledgment begins when that recognition starts reorganising future behaviour—not because it escaped causality, but because it became part of the causal process shaping what happens next.

That leads me to define agency like this:

Agency is the capacity of a system to reorganise its own continuation through acknowledgment.

Notice that this doesn't require libertarian free will.

The awareness is caused.

The acknowledgment is caused.

The reorganisation is caused.

Agency isn't freedom from causality. It's a feature of certain causal systems: systems capable of incorporating models of themselves into the processes that determine what they become next.

I also think this explains why narrative matters.

A coherent self-narrative isn't agency itself, but it gives continuity to the self-model. It binds memory, evaluation, and identity together so acknowledgment can persist across time. Without some degree of coherence, agency becomes increasingly fragmented or reactive.

So my questions are:

Does this describe something genuinely different from standard compatibilist "reasons-responsiveness," or is it just another way of expressing it?

Is acknowledgment a meaningful distinction from simple awareness?

- If all of this remains fully causal, is "agency" still a useful concept even if ultimate authorship is impossible?

If so, does the term free will actually clarify anything, or does it mostly keep dragging the discussion back to basic desert and ultimate responsibility?

This is another common misconception about randomness. A really weird completely unsubstantiated illogical claim. I really don't understand what makes people spew out such absurdities.

People who make this claim don't seem to understand what it means. Rejecting randomness means believing in a god who decides every unpredictable outcome that people don't decide.

The logic is simple: Either someone decides everything or not.

• If someone decides everything, then nothing is random.
• If no-one decides anything, then everything is random.

This is a post to clarify all the numerous misconceptions about randomness that are so popular here. Randomness has several meanings in different contexts and that generates enough confusion even without those misconceptions.

What does it NOT mean?

Random does not mean the same as "uncaused". There are no uncaused events in reality.

Random does not mean the same as "unpredictable". It is true that random outcomes are unpredictable, but not all unpredictable outcomes are random. Randomness refers to unintentional unpredictability, errors, inaccuracies, noises, turbulences, stochastics, etc. Free will represents the other side, intentional unpredictability.

Mathematical randomness

In mathematics randomness is a property of a series. It is the unpredictability of the next item in the series based on knowledge about the preceding items. There are mathematical tools for assessing the randomness of a series. These tools detect only the absence of order or patterns, but they cannot detect the absence of an algorithm or human choice.

True randomness vs. pseudorandomness

Pseudorandomness is actually not randomness at all. Pseudorandomness (as the name implies) is fake randomness. Pseudorandom outcomes are either directly human chosen or products of a human chosen algorithm. The idea is to generate outcomes that are mathematically random enough for some practical purposes. Mathematical tools cannot distinguish between true and fake randomness.

Pseudorandom numbers are easy to generate with a computer and they are useful in non-critical applications, like arts and entertainment and to some extent in statistics. But critical applications like gambling or cryptography require true randomness.

Physical randomness

In physics randomness refers to the inaccuracy between a cause and its effect. In a probabilistic world causes determine only the probability distribution of the effect, nothing is ever determined with absolute precision. At quantum level the effect may vary quite widely, like in nuclear decay, but in macro scale billions of quantum events average out very close to the peak of the probability distribution bell curve.

Randomness vs. determinism

There is no randomness in determinism, where everything is determined by prior events with absolute precision.

"Subjective" randomness

Some people claim that randomness is subjective, that unpredictability is just the inability to predict the outcome due to lack of knowledge about the cause. That is not randomness, that is just ignorance.

Random outcomes are unpredictable even when the cause is known, because the effect is unknowable. The knowledge about the effect does not exist before the event occurs.

Philosophical and common speech randomness

Philosophically random refers to something that is both unpredictable and not decided by anyone. People's decisions are equally unpredictable, but they are deliberate not random.

This is also how we use the word random in common speech:

Randomness vs. free will

Both are unpredictable. Both generate new information, increase the complexity of the Universe. Both are excluded from the concept of determinism.

But randomness and free will can also be seen as opposites. Learning new knowledge and skills helps to avoid randomness in our actions. We make better decisions and perform with better accuracy making less errors.

Anyway, free will and randomness are mutually exclusive and exhaustive alternatives. Everything is either decided by someone or not.

• Randomness is unintentional, purposeless and neutral.
• Free will is intentional, purposeful and personal.
  

A lack of determinism is randomness. Determined mean a specific outcome is causally necessitated, which means if you had infinite knowledge youd be able to predict what happens next. Random means, its not causally necessitated, and itd still be unpredictable even if you had infinite knowledge. This understanding of these two concepts, is itself common knowledge.

Randomness just isnt freedom. Its just not. Being unpredictable even to a person with infinite knowledge doesnt mean youre free to do whatever you want, it means youre indistinguishable from a random dice!

Being able to do what you want IS the freedom.

"But what about the thing we want? What decides that?"

Well would it make you feel more special if i said your actions arent random, but your desires are? No! Thats still being indistinguishable from a random dice!

Randomness at any point in the process makes you a random dice. A literal spiritual embodiment of a random dice. This is NOT a metaphor, you would LITERALLY never act differently than a version of you running off a random dice roll.

And is randomness freedom? Not even a little bit.

(And no, pseudorandomness isnt freedom either! Being a pseudorandom dice is just as pointless!)

Compatibilism is obviously true.

I take strong scientific realism to be the proposition that every object essential to the construction or employment of our best scientific theories is an object that appears in the ontological inventory, in other words, every such object, if abstract, exists, or if concrete, has at least one instance.
In conjunction with the principle that we should endeavour to hold all and only true beliefs, strong scientific realism commits us to the soundness of indispensability arguments, that is arguments concluding that if positing x is essential to our best science, x exists.

Non-Euclidean geometries play an essential part in GPS navigation, so, by an indispensability argument, one of the things that a strong scientific realist is committed to is that space is non-Euclidean, however, liquids or gasses in equilibrium entail the Pythagorean theorem, and the Pythagorean theorem is equivalent to the parallel postulate. As the first law of thermodynamics ensures, on pain of perpetual motion machines, that liquids and gases have a state of equilibrium, the strong scientific realist is also committed to the stance that space is Euclidean.
Here we have a choice, we can appeal to the principle of non-contradiction and hold that as strong scientific realism, in conjunction with the principle that we should endeavour to hold all and only true beliefs, commits us to the belief that space both is and is not Euclidean, strong scientific realism is false. Alternatively, if we accept ontological pluralism, that space both is Euclidean and is not Euclidean, we can preserve strong scientific realism.

But this latter move has an interesting consequence. As Euclidean and non-Euclidean metrics are distinct, an ontologically pluralistic world, of this type, does not have a definite description, and if a world is determined, then, at all times, that world has a definite global description. So, strong scientific realism, in conjunction with the principle that we should endeavour to hold all and only true beliefs, commits us to the stance that determinism is false.

I have explicitly avoided redefining free will in the previous posts because the definitions of free will are irrelevant to basic desert. But all the responses were basically 'but what about free will???'

Fine. Here it is.

Agency: the capacity of an actor to act, feel and make choices purposefully and intentionally in a given environment

Supported by: hard incompatibilism, hard determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism

Free will: a type of agency that grounds basic desert

Supported by: compatibilism and libertarianism

LFW: a type of agency that includes the ability to have done otherwise under identical conditions

Supported by: libertarianism

We can discuss the implications after we settled these definitions.

Any questions?

What's the deal with fate? If Nikki never truly had a choice, then why does her suffering resonate with us so deeply? And if Bear is merely a passive observer, why do we find ourselves pleading, 'Come on, don't do it!'? If they're just following a predetermined script, who are we really rooting for?

Obsession suggests that love—or rather, what Bear mistakes for love—can become so overpowering that it overrides reason, imprisoning both the obsessed and the object of that obsession. Ironically, this portrayal of inevitability makes a compelling case for free will. Why? Because the loss of agency is depicted not as normal human behaviour but as a tragedy. Viewers instinctively sense that something irreplaceable has been lost—the power to choose.

If human beings were nothing more than biological machines driven by unavoidable impulses, then moral responsibility would be an illusion. We wouldn't blame, admire, forgive, or condemn anyone. We'd simply observe behaviour, much as we observe a storm or an earthquake. Yet the emotional power of Obsession depends on the conviction that the characters ought to have chosen differently.

The Bible offers a more nuanced view of obsession, depicting desires not as unstoppable forces that strip away human choice. Cain was warned that sin was "crouching at the door," yet he was commanded to master it. David faced temptation but took responsibility instead of blaming passion. Judas developed greed gradually, rather than being an unwitting pawn. In each story, intense desires influenced actions, but the power to choose remained intact.

Modern psychology also distinguishes between influence and compulsion. Even in cases of obsessive thinking, diminished control is not the same as the absence of agency.

Obsession succeeds as drama because it exaggerates the struggle between desire and choice. Ironically, in trying to deny free will, it ends up defending it. The moment autonomy disappears, we instinctively recognise that something fundamentally human has been lost.

"Creativity doesnt exist. All works of art are manifestations of the subconscious mind, which come from our genes, which come from evolution, which has its roots in game theory. Go to an alien planet, i bet theyd have eerily similar works of art, music, etc to ours; Thats convergent evolution in action. All creativity is, is determined patterns, plus a tiny bit of random chance."

"Love isnt real. Finding the love of your life was pure random chance. If you moved into a different apartment, got a different job, woke up at a slightly different time one morning, you wouldve never met them. And theyd be making babies with someone else as we speak. Your love is purely circumstantial, a hormonally driven call to procreate, and you chanced your way into the relationship youre in, nothing more."

"Youre a slave. Everything you do was caused by something else. Youre the product of genetics and your experiences, neither of which you chose. Everything you do is just an echo of what happened before, and if it wasnt, itd be random."

"And you are... Guys? Hey guys? Whered everyone go?..."

Off in the distance "You suck! Always a debbie downer!" "Yeah, we're trying to have fun here!" "Get out of our party weirdo!"

I tip my fedora, "So be it, then." and my swooshed away like Batman, off to spread my Nihilism somewhere else.

...

So yeah, you can live your life like this, if you want. Calling everything meaningless by reducing it down to other things. But this isnt really philosophy, not rigorously, its just pessimism, drunk on contrarianism.

But theres an actual fallacy in here.That because a thing is reducible to other things, it must not be meaningful. But, thats just how everything in the universe works. All things are made of other things, which are not, the original thing.

People tend to love Mystery. When Mystery is all they know, and they live in a cloud of Ignorance, they learn to value the Mystery, as if its Good in and of itself. So when someone bursts that bubble, sometimes it leaves them feeling empty inside. The thing thry valued is gone, so now they are sad. But they only feel this way, because they chose to value Mystery, and not Knowledge.

And this is where the Light of Compatibilism shines down on our faces. Like Jesus Christ, its here to save and redeem us from our state of darkness; Saving us from the darkness of Mystery, and bringing us into the Light of Knowledge.

Creativity isnt meaningless, its a beautiful portrait of a fractal informational reality, and if we peer inside, we see a universe of complexity, designed by nothing, but existing, miraculously. All this information, it just comes from math. And theres infinite amaxing things to discover in the realm of Math.

Love is real. You may have lucked into your relationship, but you lucked into your relationship. Youre lucky. Lucky to have an interesting person in your life, someone you can take care of and care about, someone to challenge you, someone to care about you. It couldve been anyone, and if it were, youd stand to lose a lot.

And youre not a slave. You make your own choices. Why you are you, where you came from, remain mysteries. But the fact that you are you doesnt stop you from achieving your deepest dreams and desires, and it doesnt make what you care about meaningless.

If compatibilism is like Jesus, then Determinism is like God. Alignment with this metaphorical God is all that matters, since its the essence of all thats good. Want to improve the things you care about, make sure they are good? Then use Logic and Science, which are Deterministic processes. By embracing the Light of Knowledge you can be all that you can be.

And when you realize this, the cynicism washes away, like a demon cast out of your body. Thats all we need, to be redeemed by Knowledge and Objectivity, and when we are, the pessimism has no place to live any longer.

If you cant punish the criminal, then you cant punish the punisher.

Therefore, how do you plan to enforce your viewpoint on the world? Using violence that you simply dont call "punishment"?

Pardon me if i think this is like a word game, and not a substantive philosophical position.

The point of moral desert is to separate people into moral categories, like guilty and innocent; That way we do not EVER punish or use illegitimate force or violence the innocent.

I think thats extremely important, to NEVER initiate violent force on the innocent, dont you?

We always assume a strict timeline where the past fixes the present and the present fixes the future. But what if causality actually works through recursive loops?

If the present is an active, open-ended generator, that standard model of time flips. History is a persistent informational artifact being maintained by the current state of the loop. The past isn’t a static block sitting behind us.

A synchronic view of causality completely changes how we look at human agency.
Free will isn't about breaking physical laws or fighting fate. It's a self-referential system writing its own context in real time.

“As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe.”

Kurt Vonnegut: Breakfast of Champions

If you strip free will of its power to ground desert all you are left with is agency. And hard determinism allows agency. Stop calling agency free will if you don't want to use it to ground desert!

People will spend ten thousand words arguing whether compatibilism "counts" as real free will, or whether hard incompatibilists are just determinists in denial, or whether libertarians are making things up. All of it is noise. The only question that matters is whether you believe in basic desert.

Basic desert is the idea that someone deserves blame or praise purely for what they did, backward-looking, not because it produces good outcomes. Either you think this exists, or you don't. Everything else is rearranging furniture.

If you support basic desert, you are either a compatibilist or a libertarian. You believe there is some capacity humans have that makes them fundamentally deserving of moral credit or blame. The compatibilist says Determinism doesn't threaten this capacity. The libertarian says it does, so we need indeterminism. They disagree on mechanics but agree on the thing that matters: people can deserve.

If you reject basic desert, you are a hard incompatibilist or a hard determinist. You look at the causal chain and conclude nobody is the ultimate source of their actions in a way that would justify intrinsic desert. What remains is agency. You can deliberate, choose, plan, be reasons-responsive. But none of it grounds the claim that someone fundamentally deserves to suffer for what they did.

At this point, calling agency "free will" is just confusing. It makes people think you've smuggled desert back in. If I say "I have free will" and I mean "I can act for reasons," half the room thinks I'm claiming I deserve praise, and the other half thinks I'm denying Determinism. The word has become a liability.

This is why definitions don't matter. You can define free will however you want. You can call a ham sandwich free will if your definition is loose enough.

What matters is whether your view of human action includes basic desert. That is the red line. Everything else is semantics.

A compatibilist who rejects basic desert is just a hard incompatibilist who is afraid to say it. They want to keep the word "free will" for emotional or political reasons, maybe because they think society will collapse without the label. But if the substance of their position is that nobody fundamentally deserves blame, then they are on the hard incompatibilist side of the line. The word "compatibilist" is doing no work except making them feel better.

Similarly, a hard determinist who spends all day talking about how we should preserve moral responsibility in some non-desert sense is just doing compatibilism with a frown. The label doesn't change what they actually believe about human agency.

Stop arguing about whether free will is compatible with Determinism. Start arguing about whether anyone fundamentally deserves to be punished for what they did. That is the only debate with stakes. The rest is people fighting over a word that has outlived its usefulness.

Hey everyone! I’m relatively new to discussions on free will and philosophy in general. My goal here isn’t to provoke anyone or reinforce my own beliefs but really just to challenge a bit of what I believe and maybe get some insight on new perspectives.

I study behavior and my field seems to be extremely deterministic. I would say I largely agree with them and at this point in my life I would struggle to make anything close to a good case for freewill (with my extremely limited knowledge). Something I’ve noticed while browsing the sub is that it feels like there is a separation between what I feel most people would believe freewill to mean and what philosophers might try defining freewill as.

I’m not entirely sure what compatibalism entails. I might generally agree with it if given more insight but I’m not sure if I would ever say I believe in freewill because it feels like it defines it in a way I don’t normally hear. Does this matter? Do philosophers generally care about colloquial usage? I feel like if not this kind of inhibits reach.

These are just some thoughts from a person who has a very limited understanding of philosophy. Please feel free to push back on any potential views you think I might have.

Determinists on this sub are not advancing arguments that would persuade non-determinists to accept determinism. No exception. Nor are they offering arguments that would persuade people who are merely undecided.

What would such arguments be like? Here's one way they would be, they would be valid arguments whose premises are acceptable to their intended audience. If the audience consists of committed non-determinists, the premises have to be ones they already accept and the conclusion would have to establish or entail determinism. Unsurprisingly, if the audience consist of undecided non-determinists, the premises have to be acceptable to them and support the same conclusion.

If determinists on this sub are not doing that, then what are they doing?

They are persistently asserting many implausible, unbelievable, inconceivable, absurd, incoherent or plainly false claims while thinking and treating those claims as though they settled the issue or something. When asked to justify these claims, the response is usually just another round of assertions, thus reassertions plus evasions, downvotes or ad hominem remarks rather than an actual defense of the "argument". We have a cycle of repetition and misunderstanding, a total and utter cringe fest.

The more general problem, in my view, is that many members of this sub, certainly not only determinists, appear to not only lack a solid grasp of how philosophical argumentation works, which is relatively easy to fix, but they lack those core intellectual virtues and values like intellectual honesty, sincerity, curiosity and integrity. These are indispensable for any kind of serious constructive and productive discussion.

They also appear to misunderstand the central concepts involved in the free will debate, and topics, particularly the compatibility issue. Many discussions quickly shift to causation, reasons, or "everything having a cause", even though the present dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists is not about causation. This confusion leads many participants to argue against positions that either nobody is actually defending or aren't relevant. They often treat determinism as equivalent to causation, or assume that rejecting determinism requires believing that actions are random or uncaused. Neither assumption is correct. We have people who are completely ignorant about the topic, completely unwilling to learn a thing or two about the topic, but nevertheless, completely convinced that they know what they're talking about, spamming the sub.

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the entry on arguments for incompatibilism, it is explained that the relevant notion of determinism is not a thesis about causation. Iow, determinism is not defined in terms of causation. It is standardly defined in terms of entailment: at any time, there is a complete description of the state of the world which together with the laws of nature entails a complete description of the state of the world at any other time.

The same misunderstanding extends to, e.g., libertarianism. Libertarianism is not simply the view that people have free will or that some events are uncaused. Libertarianism is the conjunction of free will realism and incompatibilism. Libertarians claim that (1) free will exists, e.g., humans possess free will, and (2) incompatibilism is true, i.e., free will is incompatible with determinism; which entails (3) determinism is false. Libertarians are incompatibilists who believe there is free will and this entails the falsity of determinism. If you want to attack libertarianism, appealing to randomness or appealing to causation does not, by itself, even address the libertarian position or the central compatibility dispute, so this is not the right way to argue against libertarians. Libertarians believe determinism is false because there's free will (since they are incompatibilists), and they don't believe the relevant free behavior is random. Is that clear?

Hearing stuff like this this... I get it now, Leeway Compatibilists. I get the feeling and the way you guys word things, i sympathize.

In the way that matters, yes, they can. At least in a future oriented sense, yes, they "can" do otherwise. The skeptic is harboring a fallacious belief to assert otherwise, one that assumes their behavior is not contingent on them and their choices in particular.

But, to play devils advocate, the statement is also wrong for a totally different reason, and i dont need to accept Leeway.

"I would if i could" is malformed, because "Would" isnt contingent on "Could" in this context, "Could" is contingent on "Would". The honest version of the statement is "I could, if i would".

Either way, the discussion of "can" and "cant" feels irrelevant to me. Isnt a persons desires and choices, intentional and aware of what they do to others, something that innately matters?

We use phrases all the time like "They did that intentionally" and "They knew what they were doing [was wrong]". I find these justifications to appear far before people talk about possibilities in the philosophical abstract.

The Analogy i promised:

If a guy wanted to murder someone, and they were about to, then by some cosmic accident a bicyclist runs into them, they trip, drop their gun, it discharges, and shoot their victim anyways... In a sense they "couldnt do otherwise" in that moment. Do they suddenly become "not responsible" for their intended action? Id beg to differ. It was the performed intent that truly matters.

We might offer an argument structured like this:
1) if the world is non-empty, then P or not-P
2) if P, the world is empty
3) if not-P, the world is empty
4) if the world is non-empty, then the world is empty
5) the world is empty.
When they first see this kind of argument a person's initial reaction is often to point out that if the world is empty, then the above argument doesn't exist, so the argument is self-defeating and the conclusion must be false.
But this is to entirely miss the point, because of course the conclusion is false, nobody is suggesting otherwise.

If the conclusion of a valid argument is false, one of the premises must be false, and in classical logic, if a premise is false, it's negation is true. In other words, when we are faced with a valid argument for a conclusion that is false, we are committed to the truth of the negation of one of that argument's premises, and as we might want to avoid asserting the truth of that proposition, that we are committed to doing so is described as a cost.
Philosophy is very much the business of establishing the costs attached to endorsing various propositions, what is important isn't just what you think is true, it is what you are intellectually committed to by thinking it to be true.

All healthy human adults unavoidably assume the reality of their free will and they demonstrate the reliability of that assumption hundreds of times every day. So, the cost of accepting an argument for the unreality of free will is that we are radically mistaken about our everyday assumptions and abilities, including our ability to demonstrate that an assumption is more plausible than its denial. I don't know of any argument for the unreality of free will that doesn't have premises that can be denied for a lesser cost, do you?
On the other hand, what is the cost of accepting that things are as we unavoidably assume them to be?

15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not! 16Do you not know that when you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

Personally I know I can't get free from sin on my own as desire and effort can not save you. It takes a higher power (Jesus is the only one I know of) lifting you out of your slavery to sin.

Jesus Christ was right about everything as he is the messiah and the Lord. Free will doesn't exist we are slaves and will never not be slaves. The bible is clear on this.

Tldr the only thing you can be is either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. Not free in any way.

Like, so what if there's no moral desert? It doesn't change anything

We'll keep punishing people because nobody has a choice in the matter. Not the punishers or the punished.

Like, say moral desert is false, okay? You can't advocate for any change because change is impossible. Your actions, much like everyone else's are determined.

If moral desert is false, does this change anything about anything at all?

EDIT: I've realized I've been using moral desert backwards. I thought it was related to like, the Sahara, because of deserts and shit. Therefore the moral desert would be the one where morality doesn't mean anything because determinism.

I've come to realize this isn't true, I've modified the text in the post to change (invert) it's meaning to what I meant.