I can't believe people still believe in free will and agency. I'm not aware of anything in biology or physics that suggests we have some magic spark in a mystical plane that gives us "free will". We just do stuff in response to stimulus. I would have thought this debate would die when neurologists started opening up people's brains and inducing massive personality shifts and various cognitive aberrations by poking people's brain meat with electrodes. It's just a false dichotomy left over from weird medieval religious nonsense.

God they're talking about choosing to act Killllll meeeeeee

I'm reading the intro to Infinite Thought btws feel free to check in here because I will be cataloging my distress relating to French people who spend too much time thinking and not enough time practicing with swords.

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I’m not aware of anything in biology or physics that suggests we have some magic spark in a mystical plane that gives us “free will”.

    Yeah, because it's not a question of biology or physics. Scientific inquiry can reveal a lot about the observable world. We have philosophy for everything that isn't that.

    • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Scientific inquiry can reveal a lot about the observable world. We have philosophy for everything that isn’t that.

      to be fair science is itself a philosophy. An empirical philosophy about how to make hypotheses, test them through observation of controlled experiments, and then record results

      • space_comrade [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Empiricism relies on our subjective images and models (that exist only within our mind) of the objective material world to make its conclusions. If you try to use empiricism and only empiricism to investigate the subjective images themselves (and thus the mind itself) you end up chasing your tail IMO.

        • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Empiricism relies on our subjective images and models (that exist only within our mind) of the objective material world to make its conclusions

          Well there's nothing else to go off of because our brain is the only thing we have to interface with reality. No matter what device we use to measure reality, it is our "subjective models that exist only within our minds" that ultimately take in the data from those devices of measurement. So I'm not sure what else there is.

          If you try to use empiricism and only empiricism to investigate the subjective images themselves (and thus the mind itself) you end up chasing your tail IMO.

          is there an alternative I'm not aware of? All alternatives I'm aware of still rely on the subjective interpretations of reality within the human mind, but without the rigors of empirical philosophy and peer review processes being applied to stave of cognitive biases and methodological failures and so on. I know it can be a limited conceptual framework, but it's limited for specific reasons.