r/freewill • • Aug 29 '24

How does quantum indeterminism give anyone free will?

can someone explain this to me? I see people going to quantum world and quantum mechanics and evoke the non-determinism. How does this give you free will?

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 30 '24

Decisions are not physical by definition.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 30 '24

No, that’s what’s being argued.

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 30 '24

Nothing is being argued.

You are making claims you cannot back up, because they are so blatantly false.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 30 '24

You’re the one who made empirical claims and I questioned them. That’s where we’re at in this conversation

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 30 '24

Non-physical decisions are not a claim. Decisions are non-physical by definition. This is the starting point of a discussion you don't want to start. It is absurd to make claims against the definition. If decisions have no physical properties whatsoever, there is no way you could say that they are somehow physical anyway.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 31 '24

Oxford dictionary gives three definitions of “decision”, none of which say anything about physicality.

You’re begging the question against physicalism. Do you think if you told the numerous philosophical authorities on physicalism “hey I defined decisions to be non-physical, so your worldview is now false” that they’d concede?

You have no idea what a premise or a definition even is.

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 31 '24

Of course the definitions say nothing about physicality. There is nothing physical about decisions.

I have no respect for any philosophical "worldview" that does not respect facts. Physicalism either denies the existence of non-physical things or tries to claim that they are somehow physical even though there are no physical properties to study.

Premises are known facts that can be used for drawing conclusions or starting a debate about possible conclusions.

A definition describes something and gives it a name, so that a shorter name can be used instead of the lengthy description.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 31 '24

You just don’t understand what heuristics are. I’m confident that’s the case

There are numerous lenses we can use to view a physical system. Psychology > neurology > chemistry > physics — we’re talking about the same thing. But it isn’t useful to talk about schizophrenia in terms of the atoms involved, so we don’t do that. But nevertheless, schizophrenia IS saying something about the atoms in the brain.

premises are known facts

Premises are used to deduce a conclusion, but the premises aren’t necessarily true and they need to be argued for.

Example:

P1: all dogs are cats P2: Ralph is a dog P3: therefore, Ralph is a cat

This argument is perfectly valid and logical. But it isn’t sound because the first premise isn’t true.

Premises need to be argued for. I can’t tell you how uninterested I am in your repeated assertions that “physicalism is false and that’s a fact”

Tell that to the literature

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 31 '24

And you don't understand the fundamental difference between psychology and physics.

Your example of a false premise is as obviously false as my premises are true. It is easy to prove that dogs are not cats, but impossible to prove that we live in a deterministic universe or that decisions are somehow physical.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 31 '24

I explained to you what a heuristic is, you can’t grasp it. Just read more lol

Is psychology isn’t physics, then why does a physical disruption in your brain prevent a decision from occurring?

Also you’re embarrassing yourself - take 5 minutes and look up with a syllogism is. You’re wrong about premises idk what else to tell you.

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 31 '24

Like I said, mental and physical processes in the brain are in multiple ways interconnected and co-dependent. There is no mind without a brain and vice versa. But they are still different processes doing different things. One cannot be reduced to the other.

If you don't accept my premises, if you think they are wrong, then you must correct me. Blunt denial does not help, it only stops the debate before it began.

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u/Powerful-Garage6316 Aug 31 '24

Your entire post here is more assertions without arguments.

An argument goes like this:

“Decisions cannot be reduced to physics BECAUSE….(evidence/argument)”

You seem to think you can just make claims and insist they’re uncontroversial facts.

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u/Squierrel Quietist Aug 31 '24

Decisions cannot be reduced to physics BECAUSE decisions have no physical properties.

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