1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 27, 2025
I’ve been encountering an increasing number of people on campus that talk about Sapolsky and biological determinism. Debating with them in the smoking section is getting incredibly frustrating as we just talk past each other. I’ve tried to outline the differences between compatibilism and incompatibilism as well as the different definitions of free will on the libertarian view and the compatibilist view. They don’t even have a definition of free will, they just attribute our actions to outside forces. They either don’t understand or don’t care about second order volition. They attribute that to brain activity, too, despite the fact that the will is not a scientific concept that can be tested.
They��ll make fun of Freud and say that he was unscientific and yet don’t seem to acknowledge that freud’s libido is the concept of the will that they want to characterize as being brain activity when freud’s name is not mentioned.
Comment by Artemis-5-75 at 29/01/2025 at 16:25 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
It is, indeed, a common problem among lay hard incompatibilists.
Denial of conscious choice is one of the most absurd positions to hold, I would say.
And many don’t understand that determinism is compatible with feeling of free will being non-illusory, as J. S. Mill described it in the past — adequate determinism isn’t a force, but rather a conclusion we can arrive at when analyzing laws that govern various objects. And humans are, well, predictable!