Haha, I remember taking my philosophy classes. They're all convincing until you learn what the next guy thinks, pretty much.

Soft determinism is just a way of attempting to skew the definition of free will, imo. The notion has always been contradicting to me unless you begin arguing semantics.

Not having free will doesn't mean the choice isn't yours, mind you. The choice is still yours, you were just destined to make it due to your biology relative to the variables in the situation/event you are responding to.

Furthermore, the fact that a choice is yours doesn't mean you made the choice with free will.

edit. I love the topic, though, because it really makes you think.

Originally Posted by muRda

Haha, I remember taking my philosophy classes. They're all convincing until you learn what the next guy thinks, pretty much.

That's exactly what I was thinking lolololol.

By skew you mean change what you thought it was? What did you think it was? I still believe that if you define free will as you deciding which choice to make, there is no conflict between having free will in a deterministic universe. Ayer actually puts it this way. If a choice was choiceful, chosen, and unconstrained, it was chosen freely. I'm sure you can look this up, typing it on my phone would be lolz.

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Originally Posted by muRda

Haha, I remember taking my philosophy classes. They're all convincing until you learn what the next guy thinks, pretty much.

Sounds like psych for me. "Here we have the psychodynamics that think man is evil and overly sexual." "So true." "Next we have the social psychodynamics that believe man is inherently good." "Agreed, wait...SHIT."

Originally Posted by bjorn_248

If a choice was choiceful, chosen, and unconstrained, it was chosen freely.

How could it be unconstrained if priorly determined?

EDIT: Is priorly not a word? Coming up on spell check :\

Originally Posted by bjorn_248

That's exactly what I was thinking lolololol.

By skew you mean change what you thought it was? What did you think it was? I still believe that if you define free will as you deciding which choice to make, there is no conflict between having free will in a deterministic universe. Ayer actually puts it this way. If a choice was choiceful, chosen, and unconstrained, it was chosen freely. I'm sure you can look this up, typing it on my phone would be lolz.

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The question is, what is "you"?

Does our biology (specifically, the biological make-up and functionality of the brain) control our consciousness, or does our consciousness control that?

There's a lot of scientific evidence that the origin of control is biological... unique biological makeup we were born with unwillingly.

A lot of these terms must be defined before I use them. Choiceful means that there was a decision making process that was engaged when making the decision. Chosen means that the choice that my decision making process returned was the actual returned choice. In class the kleptomaniac was given as an example. Even if he decides that he's not going to steal, he still does, and in many cases he isn't held morally responsible, thus, he doesn't have free will. Unconstrained basically means that you aren't strongly compelled by another person to make your decision, the example given in class was the gunman threatening to kill you. You aren't held morally responsible for the choice you were coerced into making, in most cases, so you didn't have free will, your choice in that sense was constrained. That last one is also up for debate because which choice that person is making and if they know which choice they are making comes into play. That's what constitutes a free choice according to ayer.

I do have issue with soft determinism though, because how can we be held morally responsible if we were oh so lucky to be born with the conditions and in the environment to make that choice? Moral responsibility and free will go hand in hand, which is where ayer starts his argument, the problem is that I don't know if determinism and moral responsibility are compatible.

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Also as far as the mind body argument, I don't really think that's relevant. Even if your consciousness was a floaty ball of dust in the heavens your decisions still have to be explicable, I think. Explicable decisions require causation, otherwise are they random?

That's another argument cited by determinists a lot. "What explains our choices? Our beliefs, desires, and character. None of those are determined by your consciousness." I don't completely buy that.

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You can't always define the terms of determinism if you are the one deciding. Your hypothesis is a bold and unrealistic one.

How do you know what was you decided was at your liberty?

I don't understand the second part of your post.

The idea that we are not the one deciding only takes away our free will. It has no influence on weather we live in a causally determined universe.