If the universe on its most fundamental level is entirely probabilistic, does that not completely disprove the universe is actually entirely deterministic? All we can predict is the probabilities of certain outcomes.

Why yes, why not

A reactive attitude, assume anger, is either involving having a belief, or not involving having a belief.

The non-cognitivist position is that a reactive attitude such as anger does not involve having a (cognitive) belief, and having a cognitivist position is that reactive attitudes does involve a cognitive belief.

These cognitivists may argue that if you feel anger directed at an individual then it will mean that you hold a belief that an individual is deserving blame. There is, in a way, percieved blameworthyness.

A non-cognitivist may hold that this anger or a reactive attitude is connected to a belief about responsibility but this nomologically, so by laws of nature, or psychological laws.

Small children and animals have reactive attitudes but we tend not to think of them as even keeping the capacity or have possibilities to form cognitive thoughts.

Here it seems like that the free will sceptic who have a reactive attitude is irrational in one way or the other. One way when there are conflicting cognitive beliefs. A cognitive belief that one is deserving of blame, and the other belief is that none is deserving of blame because of it can not be their fault when free will doesn't exist and so they can't be responsible, nor can they be blameworthy.

Their directed anger implying this belief that someone deserves blame, meanwhilst the belief that deserving blame does not exist, is irrational.

The non-cognitivists may conclude that the free will sceptic is irrational because of conflicting beliefs but one is non-cognitive, this sense of that someone is responsible on a nomological level.

Maybe anger is merely unfitting not implying on irrationality. Alike the aracnophobic that knows in cognition or thought that this type of spider is harmless, meanwhilst feeling horror or fear of the spider.

What sensible and reasonable views that conflict with the position that a free will sceptic with reactive attitudes is irrational, exists, if any?

No (coherent) view believes you to be universally capable.

You can't levitate. You can't throw a rock to Jupiter. No one can.

There is a set of possible actions you can take in each moment.

We all agree to this.

Fatalism says "whatever possible action you choose from the set cannot change what is destined to occur"

Hard determinism says "the set of possible actions you can take in each moment has a size of 1"

So under hard determism, fatalism is true.

Whatever possible action you take cannot change what is destined to occur.

I've recently been looking at conflict between determinism and free will from different perspectives, and I've arrived at a to me new perspective I'd like to share.

We commonly associate free will with the ability to choose between different possible outcomes. Under this interpretation, determinism appears incompatible with free will: if every event is determined by preceding conditions, then every decision we make must also be predetermined.

But I think this interpretation might be based on a flawed assumption.

Why should free will require the ability to make a different decision under exactly identical circumstances?

Imagine making a decision. You consciously evaluate the available possibilities, consider their consequences, and ultimately choose one.

Now imagine rewinding the universe to the exact moment before that decision. Everything is identical: your memories, experiences, personality, emotional state, and surroundings.

Would you choose differently?

I would argue that you wouldn't. Even if genuine free will exists, there is no obvious reason why an identical conscious entity under identical circumstances would arrive at a different decision.

But more importantly, why would making the same decision mean that you hadn't made it freely?

This led me to reconsider what free will actually is.

Perhaps free will is;

The capacity of a conscious entity to causally participate in making decisions, regardless of whether the outcomes of those decisions are predetermined.

Under this definition, free will doesn't require independence from causality. Instead, conscious deliberation is itself part of the causal process that produces a decision.

There are several important distinctions here.

Consciousness is necessary, but not sufficient.

An entity must possess subjective awareness and the capacity for conscious thought. However, merely experiencing one's existence or observing decisions being made isn't enough. Conscious reasoning must actively contribute to producing those decisions.

Free will is a capacity, not something exercised in every action.

Instinctive reactions, reflexes, and other automatic responses don't necessarily involve conscious decision-making. An entity can possess free will without exercising it continuously.

Free will itself isn't necessarily a spectrum.

Entities can differ enormously in intelligence, reasoning ability, and the complexity of decisions they can make. But those differences don't necessarily imply different degrees of free will.

An entity either possesses the capacity for conscious decision-making or it doesn't. The sophistication of that capacity is a separate matter.

Predetermination doesn't invalidate the act of deciding.

This is perhaps the most important distinction.

We frequently confuse the ability to make a decision with the ability to change a predetermined outcome.

But these aren't necessarily equivalent.

If my conscious reasoning is among the causes of a decision, then I genuinely participate in making that decision, even if the outcome was inevitable.

The fact that a decision could theoretically have been predicted doesn't make the decision-making process any less real.

We should not define free will as the ability to escape causality.

I don't claim that this resolves the philosophical problem of free will. It leaves substantial questions unanswered, particularly regarding the nature of consciousness and whether conscious experience itself has causal efficacy.

Perhaps free will isn't freedom from causality, but a particular form of causality involving consciousness.

And perhaps the question shouldn't be:

How can my decisions be free if they're predetermined?

But;

Why does the predetermined nature of a decision make the conscious act of deciding any less real?

I know this overlaps with compatibilism but are there any existing philosophical theories that adress this more precisely? I'm curious what people think about this.

What are your thoughts on biological determinism?

Hello, I believe there is not a single type of determinism. There are many types, such as biological determinism, psychological determinism, and many others. When we combine all of them, we get what could be called pandeterminism, meaning that everything is precisely determined beforehand.

So, if everything is planned and predetermined, how can you claim that God still does not exist?

If there is a plan, which is what pandeterminism implies, then we need a planner. For me, that proves the existence of God.

Freedom is required for moral responsibility, but the neccessary freedom* are not of a kind, incompatible with determinism.

Freedom of compulsion.* And if rid ourselves the myth that causal law implies on compulsion, we may be closer to the truth of the matter.

That determinism does not imply that moral responsibility is not the case.

So, a question like "Do I have free will?" Can be translated into "Can we translate our desires into action?" (Hereby avoiding the issue of our verifiability principle)

If the answer is yes, then you have free will.

Leaving us a compatibilism. (Determinism, with free will. Or determinism does not exclude free will.)

Campbell red the texts of Schlick, who was active in 1930s.

If everything is predetermined, how can God judge us on our actions?

Ive been curious about this so lmk your thoughts

Understanding things is the only way to actually change things, to shape our future

Essentially, functioning with the truth and an accurate understanding of reality allows us to do more,

giving up comforting ideas that do not accurately reflect reality actually gives us *more* agency to shape our future

Another thing is that blame is __superfluous__, there are so many causes to each individual event, a person could carry a percent of blame, and the larger percents would still be Capitalism, death, the laws of physics, things we don't even know, the choices of a billion other people, flawed systems that were left hurting people, so many things would carry a percentage of blame, and yet the thing that would carry no percent of blame, is the actual consious self that person feels themselves to be, the consious self that has no agency in our reality, could not have chosen to have chosen differently.

Yet our society conditions us to believe the exact opposite, blaming the individual for things they had no hand in and could not have changed.

Essentially,

Judgment solves *nothing*.

People do not choose their circumstances. The only way to help people is to *understand*

Judgment and blame are superfluous and harmful.

You dont need either of them to help make a situation better. And they both stand as barriers to- and actively work against *real progress*

It's important to understand,

*Youre always doing your best*.

*Everyone is*.

Sometimes, our best hurts millions of people around us.

That doesnt mean we have to live with those consequences, we can impose boundaries, we can restrain people's ability to harm, we can try to improve and understand our situation, and prevent further harm from ever happening;

And none of that requires a single person to be evil.

consciousness can bind many different signals into a single interpretation and then mistake the coherence of that interpretation for evidence that the interpretation describes reality itself. If reality were fundamentally one signal without meaningful differences—without interruptions, contrasts, irregularities, or events that could be experienced as disruptions of rhythm—then error itself would become difficult to explain.

A mind could simply reproduce what was already present. Mistakes become possible precisely because consciousness must creatively organize differences that do not arrive with their meaning already attached. Perception has to distinguish, memory has to relate, emotion has to prioritize, prediction has to anticipate, and thought has to construct relationships among signals that may support several possible interpretations.

Creativity therefore becomes inseparable from both intelligence and error. The same capacity that allows consciousness to discover a relationship that was never previously recognized also allows it to invent a relationship that reality does not support. A constellation demonstrates the problem beautifully: the stars are real, but the lines connecting them into a recognizable figure are contributed by the observer.

Consciousness performs a comparable operation whenever it turns separate events into destiny, fluctuations into rhythm, differences into polarity, internal states into external correspondence, or coincidence into meaningful causation. The mistake is not necessarily in perceiving the individual signals; it can occur in the creative relationship consciousness binds between them.

From the perspective of the Third Eye, this makes disruption especially important. A disruption is not necessarily reality violating an underlying rhythm. It may instead be new information exposing the limitations of the rhythm consciousness previously believed it had discovered. The unexpected event, contradiction, uncomfortable sensation, or failed prediction introduces a difference that the existing organization cannot easily absorb. Consciousness then has two possibilities: force the difference back into its previous pattern or become creative enough to reorganize the pattern itself.
This gives creativity an unusual relationship with truth. Creativity does not mean freely inventing whatever explanation feels best. Its highest form may be the willingness to undo a previously successful explanation when reality supplies a difference that the explanation cannot accommodate.

The Third Eye therefore treats contradiction not as an enemy of coherence but as one of the conditions through which deeper coherence becomes possible. A perfectly repetitive universe would require almost no interpretive creativity; a changing and differentiated reality continually requires consciousness to decide what belongs together, what should remain separate, and when yesterday’s pattern should be abandoned.

Free will consequently appears at the boundary between repetition and creative reorganization. If consciousness automatically binds every new experience according to what it already believes, the past continually determines the meaning of the present. But when consciousness recognizes that even something that feels physically or intellectually true may represent a constructed relationship, another possibility emerges: it can question the binding itself. The freest mind is therefore not the mind that has finally discovered an unbreakable rhythm. It is the mind creative enough to recognize when reality has given it a reason to break one.

The seven Hermetic laws may therefore reveal something important about how minds organize reality without being universal laws of reality at all.

I mean, other than the whole being made of meat thing.

\*Velleman supposedly refers to the causal theory of action.

Ciao ragazzi, la cosa che mi turba di più di aver letto il determinismo è che prima di leggerlo io non pensavo che davvero qualcuno avesse messo o potesse mettere in dubbio il libero arbitrio.

Non l'avevo proprio messo in conto.

Consciousness is more like a spectator - along for the ride rather than pulling the levers.

If you are a determinist who does not agree with this, do you consider yourself a compatibilist rather than a hard determinist? Is the view on the role of consciousness the key difference between these two positions?

If evetrything we do is influenced with our genes, brain, childhood, environment, expiriances and other things we did not chose that shaped us.
That questions my free will. IF I COULD NOT CHOSE THE PERSON I BECAME, HOW MUCH CONTROL DID I REALY HAVE OVER MY DECISIONS. And if my decisions were caused by things that I never chose, can I be fully responsible for them? This also changes my moral judgment. I can still say that their actions were harmful and that society should stop them. But it becomes harder for me to say that the person is simply evil and deserves to suffer, because I can see their actions as the result of many diffrent thing in life that they never chose.

But i also wonder if even my thought , decisions and personality are result of previos causes than what trully is so caled “me” or “myself”

My English is nowhere perfect so please dont pick on that too much if its still understandable. If I should word something better, if I didnt make something clear enough or if I had straigh up misinformation

The way we punish people from crimes is irrational and unjustified.

Very common idea is that because you acted in a way that harmed others, therefore you deserve the treatment which matches your behaviour. Criminals get punished and good people get treated well. This idea is practiced especially in cultures affected by Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but it also occurs in other cultures. Back in the days you could easily justify the fact that because my God said that this act is evil therefore the person who chose to do wrong should be punishment for their evil ways, only bad thing is that the logic is just wrong.

Luckily humanity has progressed greatly from those days. One of the most important figures of the modern psychology is Sigmund Freud, who brought up the idea that factors beyond our knowledge affect the ways we act. His ideas were really radical during his times, but now in the 21st century, his ideas are some of the building blocks on the foundation of psychology. Our understanding of human mind has also progressed a lot. There have been many amazing minds that have investigated this topic, but the man who popularized the criticism towards the traditional idea of free will was Sam Harris, who is a philosopher, neuroscientist and an author of the book “Free Will” which was published in 2012.

Determinism has been talked about since ancient times. One of the first defenders of determinism was a Greek philosopher in the modern sence was Leucippus who said understanded that everything that happens must have a cause. Some religions for example the Calvinism which is a branch of Christianity views that everything goes according to gods plan   Immanuel Cant was a German philosopher born in the beginning of 19^th century in the Kingdom of Prussia. He also talked about free will and moral responsibility and his famous quote goes “Ought implies can”. So basically you cant be blamed for not doing something you aren’t able to do. His ideas were radical and raised suspicion amongst the Catholic church.

Determinism means that everything happening in the universe could be determined if we knew all the factors and that everything is just cause and effect continuum. Everything follows universal laws, water freezes at 0 because of the laws of physics, not because of some supernatural forces. Same applies to our own acts, cause our brains are physical objects which are affected and shaped trough outside stimulus. Our every act is determined by our genome, past events and our observation of the current cituation we are facing. Where is our free will? We didn’t chooce our genome, our parents, teacher or the situations we face.

We have to remember that they didn’t know how our brains worked and they didn’t argue about the nature of how our brains function. The goal of the philosophers was to understand what free will means, but the goal of a scientist was to understand our mind and how it makes gathers information and how it makes choices based on that. First true scientifit experiment was done by Benjamin Libet in the year 1965 and he found out that our brain makes the choice before the experience of choice happens. He did his study by asking people raise their finger whenever they felt like raising it. They were able to determine that you were going to raise your finger 300 milliseconds before you “made the choice to” His findings suggest that the unconscious processes in our brain indicates that the significance of our intention is lesser than thought-or even non-existent.

John-Dylan Haynes fMRI study was made in the year of 2008. They made their study by asking people to press either left or right button on the table. Researchers were able to predict with reasonable success, which button person taking the test was going to press secons before they had consciously made the choice. The goal of these studies wasn’t to metaphysically prove that free will doesn’t exist and they don’t actually prove it single handedly. It didn’t even touch the main argument against free will, which are that we didn’t chose the factors affecting our behaviour. The reason why those studies often are brought up by Sam Harris for example is because it significantly weakens the Libertarianist position in metaphysics(pro free will)

Im going to write a bit more about how we arent morally responsible and how it affects the way we treat others and live our lives