If I assume that “xyz” exists, you might assume that you can prove that “xyz” doesn’t exist by showing that “not xyz” exists. But if “xyz” doesn’t exist, does that mean that “not xyz” must exist. No. If “xyz” doesn’t exist it is entirely possible that “not xyz” doesn’t exist also.

And the reverse of that is equally problematic. The lack of presence doesn’t prove something doesn’t exist. If I see no apples in front of me or anywhere I go, can I conclude that apples don’t exist? Of course not. Well how about imaginary things like unicorns? No, I cannot prove there are no unicorns just because there is an absence of evidence for unicorns. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Everything I see is NOT a unicorn. Not a unicorn is the opposite of unicorn, wouldn’t you agree? Have I proven unicorns don’t exist then? Hardly. How about our favorite, “free will”? Can imaginary concepts have opposites? Especially as poorly conceived a concept as free will which would make any attempt at conceiving an opposite equally challenging.

So if I have the concept of “not free will” and cannot show that it exists, what have I shown? It appears that nothing has been accomplished. It is possible that “free will” and “not free will” are both silly fantasies, if both are just meaningless words. If something doesn’t exist, its opposite cannot always be expected to exist. Requiring me to prove that “not free will” exists is a fool’s errand.

Look, we are simply recycling through our arguments now and nothing new is being said.

Perhaps I should summarize my position and leave it for others to consider.

One of the issues of cognitive sciences is what concepts are useful and what should be abandoned for whatever reason. For example, should “souls” be a serious study of cognitive science? If so, it would seem that we should verify that souls exist. It is in that sense that I treat “free will” as something that some should first verify that there really is such a thing/process as free will. As far as I can gather, Shaun Gallagher, a leading phenomenologist, accepts the idea that we have a *sense* of free will, while leaving the question of whether it is an illusion or real for others to determine. I hope I am not putting words in his mouth. As I mentioned, I accept that we can have a feeling that something exists even if there is no reliable evidence one way or the other. For many the feeling they have free will is all they believe they need to substantiate its existence. I don’t agree. Many claim they have a soul for similar reasons but none have ever been able to verify that.

Are free will advocates fighting a rear guard action to defend souls? History does show us the intimate relationship between advocates of souls and advocates of free will, with a soul being the agent of free will. (Today the “self” is often substituted for “soul” in an attempt to modernize “free will”. Is the “self” the new “soul”?) So it is not unnatural to suppose there is some association going on. (Is this a result of the German language using the same word for spirit and mind?) Belief in souls, or selves, and in free will may continue to be entertained by the average believer while being set aside as useless, or meaningless, by most cognitive scientists because all concepts, objects, and things studied using the scientific method require verification of their existence but NOT the verification that they don’t exist. In part, as I’ve argued, this is due to the fact that you cannot prove a negative, so the responsibility always falls on the shoulders of the person using the term and never on the person questioning its existence. It may be irritating to people who believe in souls that they actually be required to verify that souls exist, but if they want to be scientists that is a requirement. It is the same for “free will” or any other concept we have either inherited from the past or invent today. So this issue extends far beyond the question of free will. And the fact that issue extends beyond free will is why I have taken the time to use free will as an example of how to address concepts old or new in cognitive science.

That requirement of verification is something that appeals to most people as it is an honest request and helps scope in the limits of what any science includes in its purview. If theologies want to continue accepting free will they are welcome to do that but they clearly violate what is an ethical rule of verification if they do and pretend they are speaking with any scientific authority, and run the risk of becoming irrelevant, if not laughable and irreverent by their own standards.

Unless someone has some new idea to add to this conversation, I have nothing more to say.

Where is your hypothesis? Where is the test? Giving the example of a sleepwalker who doesn’t communicate doesn’t verify that the activities of the brain that are beyond the field of view of consciousness do not influence or dominate how choices are made.
Actually, I do think dreaming may be a sort of internal consciousness or mindfulness, and I also realize that not remembering what you’ve done isn’t a valid test of whether you were conscious, or not, but, by definition, conscious awareness means responsive to sensory/environmental stimuli, lucidly. http://en.wikipedia%5B.%5Dorg/wiki/Consciousness

So using an argument against determinism is no support of free will.
Yeah, you are correct, and I just assumed you’re determinist. I am, though! Compatibilist.

you cannot prove something doesn’t exist if it doesn’t exist.
Only if by definition it isn’t detectable, which renders the explanation meaningless anyway.
You can prove something doesn’t exist by proving the opposite exists, and that is what you must do. Think of lumeniferous ether, phlogiston, etc.
You can also prove something doesn’t exist by showing that it isn’t possible for it to exist, and that is exactly what you are trying to say, that free will isn’t possible.
Isn’t it? It sure looks like it. However, I also must prove my belief, to prove that yours false, and neither one of us can do that.
It is not valid for you to say that until I prove otherwise, your opinion reflects reality, yet mine does not.
AFAIK, determinism is the only defense for the non-free will view, and I know that because the universe is not deterministic, cause and effect still is, and for all intents and purposes, every effect has a cause, our will, free or otherwise, has a cause, and that naturalist reductionism implies, and basically proves, that each cause has only one possible effect, and each specific effect has only one specific cause.

But the reductionist view is overly simplistic, and you concede as much by stating the universe isn’t deterministic precisely because of its complexity, so now I don’t understand, don’t you think our brain is complex enough?
See, my argument is that because the brain is so complex, we can’t tell how it works with confidence, and because we don’t even understand how it works is even possible, eg. the Hard Problem of Consciousness, that obviously we cannot state anything about it with any reliability, as far as to how consciousness developes and operates.
We do have consciousness, so it must be usefull somehow, don’t you think?
The only new usefullness it introduces to survivability is what it indeed seems to be doing, and that is that it is able to weigh and reject or accept various alternatives before making a final decision.

That’s a very strong case ‘for’ free will, I think, and to say that not only is the perception of what our consciousness is used for, wrong, that it, in effect, it is useless to begin with!, which reductionism ‘proves.’
Now that is something that really, very truly, does not make sense.

By the way, I would be very careful in using the words “belief” or “believe”. I personally try to avoid those words as it is never clear what a person means when they use them, even in context. I only used them in this reply because you want to frame the issue as conflicting beliefs. For me, belief is usually a mild insult that indicates a lack of insight, a declaration of membership, or a superficial substitute for knowledge that is, at best, a clever attempt to pretend to be knowledge that somehow escapes the need for justification or verification. I don’t “believe” free will doesn’t exist. Rather I see no evidence that it does, and until I see any real evidence, as a responsible scientist and philosopher, I dismiss it as some of the ancient conceptual baggage left over from the dark ages when people believed in ghosts and magic.
Well, that’s all fine, but for one thing, all we hold are opinions and beliefs, and as a scientist you should know that nothing is 100% objective, no matter how many people agree it is. ‘You’, are inside a brain in your head, and ‘you’ can only form beliefs about objective reality, based on empirical evidence.
Furthermore, that’s what science IS, a tool to test whether our beliefs are true or not.
Science is a system of knowledge about reality, one that I happen to think is the only one that works, and that it can explain everything completely.
So, I am sorry, but I don’t use the term ‘belief’ with a hidden agenda to belittle your opinion what so ever, I actually apply it to myself in order to enhance my objectivity. It believe it is true for everyone, it makes us all equal; the validity of yours or my beliefs is at question, not that they are beliefs.
Now, as a philosopher, I believe you should know that saying, “I dismiss it as some of the ancient conceptual baggage left over from the dark ages when people believed in ghosts and magic. Ghosts and magic make great, entertaining fiction but they are not cognitive science and neither is free will.” is a meaningless statement, and invalid logic as it is pure assumption what reasons people have for doing anything.
The onus is certainly on you to prove your assertions, to begin with, and also as a philosopher and scientist, you should know that argument from authority is a logical fallacy, a bad one, and invalid one scientifically, and that employing it is a sign of a lack of anything relevant to say on the part of the individual using that tactic.

That said, I am comfortable with the compromise that people have the *belief* or *sense* of having free will simply because the ego/self is demonstratively very good at confabulation.
It is very good at confabulation in regards to the abilities of the self, that I agree with, and I would stipulate that that is exactly what you are doing, trying to rationalize your invalid, or weakly supported, opinion. I even have good evidence that that’s what you are doing here, because by asserting that ‘most peoples’ reasoning is due to ‘x’, you are implying that you have a superior perspective, and you are, again, stipulating a demonstrably false and/or invalid supposition about what you cannot conceivably know.
This is an arrogant, and pedantic, and pompous statement: I dismiss it as some of the ancient conceptual baggage left over from the dark ages when people believed in ghosts and magic. Ghosts and magic make great, entertaining fiction but they are not cognitive science and neither is free will.
And neither is your opinion scientific nor learned, but that is my opinion.

So I conclude, now, that you are another example of how weak the support for the non-free will opinion is, but I am strongly vulnerable to confirmation bias, and I have never come close to obtaining a representative sample.
But, as a scientist, you would know that.

That’s another very strong sign of ego defense, BTW, your selective application of rules to others and not employing them yourself.

Now, would you please, at least, propose a reasonable scenario for our perception of free will to be false, yet sensible, both rationally, and psychologically? No more biased comparisons between the ability of various parties to develop and employ valid arguments.

BTW, I am a heroin addict and alcoholic, I never graduated high school, and have no secondary training or education, so now, we have two examples of appearances being deceiving

If you read other posts I have made to this topic, you will find that I have explicitly argued against determinism and showed why free will, if it existed, is not the opposite of determinism. Rather non-determinism is the opposite of determinism and, yes, we clearly live in a non-determinist universe, simply because of its overwhelming complexity. But free will and non-determinism really have nothing to do with each other. So using an argument against determinism is no support of free will.

Likewise, I have never argued against intentionality or voluntary behavior. I accept John Searle’s ideas about intentionality, only as a metaphor. To be fair, you really ought to supply the source of any quotes, although it appears that you cut those quotes off of some Wikipedia page.

You then propose I prove my “beliefs”. And I have argued that cannot be done because, as I showed in other posts to this forum, that you cannot prove something doesn’t exist if it doesn’t exist. You cannot prove a negative. And the reason why is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So, no, you didn’t relieve those who believe in free will of proving their belief, and, no, you didn’t successfully lob the ball back into my side of the court.

By the way, I would be very careful in using the words “belief” or “believe”. I personally try to avoid those words as it is never clear what a person means when they use them, even in context. I only used them in this reply because you want to frame the issue as conflicting beliefs. For me, belief is usually a mild insult that indicates a lack of insight, a declaration of membership, or a superficial substitute for knowledge that is, at best, a clever attempt to pretend to be knowledge that somehow escapes the need for justification or verification. I don’t “believe” free will doesn’t exist. Rather I see no evidence that it does, and until I see any real evidence, as a responsible scientist and philosopher, I dismiss it as some of the ancient conceptual baggage left over from the dark ages when people believed in ghosts and magic. Ghosts and magic make great, entertaining fiction but they are not cognitive science and neither is free will. That said, I am comfortable with the compromise that people have the *belief* or *sense* of having free will simply because the ego/self is demonstratively very good at confabulation.

In this recent post, you insist that all decisions are made at the conscious level but I see no testable hypothesis from you or a test that could verify that is true. I have seem good evidence to the contrary

When you are asleep, you cannot decide to go to the store.
When you are in a coma, you cannot decide to do anything at all.
We only ‘consciously’ evaluate and decide, when we are conscious.

I have seem good evidence to the contrary.

Okay, what evidence? Sleepwalking? Talk to someone sleepwalking, and have an intellectual conversation with them. It doesn’t happen, in fact, I cannot conceive of any possible evidence, let alone god evidence, for your claim

You believe it to be true, so for you it must be true? Please grant me the license to question the validity of your method of belief in determining what is reality, especially since you never move beyond stating your beliefs.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. That is how we test our beliefs to see if they are true. If we make predictions based on our beliefs, and they obtain, that indicates they are valid in those situations. If you question my beliefs, you must state why they are invalid, you cannot just go ahead and insist they are false, or inapplicable, until I prove them 100%.
For that matter, you cannot back up your belief, for you propose no way in which to test it’s veracity, so as far as I, and every major philosopher I’ve read, has seen.
You only propose the ontological argument that determinism is always true, but it is shown to be false sometimes, and indeterminable some other times.
A quote: “Bertrand Russell famously argued against the notion of cause along these lines (and others) in 1912, and the situation has not changed. By trying to define causal determination in terms of a set of prior sufficient conditions, we inevitably fall into the mess of an open-ended list of negative conditions required to achieve the desired sufficiency.”

And this also shows the unprovability of determinism:
“Generally, as John Earman quipped (1986), to go this route is to “… seek to explain a vague concept—determinism—in terms of a truly obscure one—causation.” More specifically, neither philosophers’ nor laymen’s conceptions of events have any correlate in any modern physical theory.[1]“

So, you expect me to propose a test, yet your position is dubious, scientifically and philosophically, from the outset. You have no empirical evidence at all, and I have, not only my own observations, but the billions of observations made every day, and in fact, it is impossible NOT to perceive our behaviors as anything other then voluntary and intentional.

So far, I can see justification for your assertions of your beliefs to be true. You have to show how causal determinism applies to our conscious awareness, and you can start by describing our consciousness, qualia, and abstract thoughts as being ordinary states of matter and energy that behave in ways that can be manipulated like objectively real ‘things’, such as gases, liquids, and solids, and/or quantifiable and measurable like fields and forces.

How do you propose to do that?

You assert that our minds are determined like ordinary, everyday events, with ordinary, common, 3 dimensional objects and substances in objective space, yet our minds are clearly not the same.
There is no conceivable way to propose how our conscious minds arise, or obtain, physically.
There are examples of other situations in reality that are not understandable to us classically, including but not limited to, virtual particles, lower limits to units of size, time, forces, that are not arbitrarily close to zero, quantum effects, like liquid helium, which has zero viscosity, being spun in a container the size of a small(perhaps one ounce/30 ml) cup, in a small cup that displays quantum states, ie. the spinning liquid is perfectly flat and level in the cup, even as the rotational speed is increased, it does not start to get higher against the edges of the container AT ALL.
Then, as the speed increases, it instantly assumes the shape we would expect spinning water would take with more liquid piling up against the edges.
The liquid helium ‘advances’ by discrete, instantaneous steps, with zero intermediate transition between the different states of centrifuge.

Now, dark matter is 75% of the mass of our universe, and it either spills out from empty space, due to expansion, or it ‘pushes’ out from absolutely nothing, and causes empty space/time to be created along with its emergence.

I will easily keep going, there is lot’s more, even bizarre conceptual situations, that we cannot, even in principle, understand classically, and one of these is the presence of qualia, the awareness of experience, the complexity of the physical brain.
There are 100 trillion connections between neurons in our physical brain. I am not saying our minds are anything but physical, but only in ways we do not, and can not, understand and conceptualize classically.

There are millions of billions of obtainable states in our brain, layers upon layers of 3 dimensional networks of 100′s to millions and even billions of nodes that fluctuate and change size and active state on millisecond time scales.

I dare you to define the one instant, the one transitional state, that also includes in its description, the physical properties of the ongoing thought and awareness of qualia events transpiring.

If even come within a couple of orders of magnitude of defining this state, only one of an innumerable states that exist microsecond by microsecond as the event known as a decision transpires, I will check myself into a psychiatric emergency treatment center, as if I maybe shouldn’t be considering that right now, already, LOL.

I will wait, it is your turn to propose a plausible explanation for how this physically indescribable situation somehow creates a classical evolution of events that also explains why our perception of free will would be an illusion when it maps perfectly to objective reality just as all our perceptions and thoughts do virtually all of the time.
But, more than that, you must explain what exactly that illusion is, how it can be exactly correlated to physical brain states like the rest of our thoughts that allow us to 8understand and relate to physical reality good enough to build 27 kilometer diameter particle accelerators and colliders to understand and study exotic states of matter at energies approaching those when the universe was dominated by radiation.
That is how well our perceptions map to reality, exquisitely and sublimely, yet our most powerful perception, the one that defines who we are, is an allusion.

That, my friend, seems to me, to be a non sequitur.

How can you verify that? I don’t know of any way to do that. I mean I can verify that a person has a belief, but I don’t see how belief can be used to verify something believed in. In fact I’m pretty sure belief qua belief is not a method that can be used to determine the truth about anything.

In this recent post, you insist that all decisions are made at the conscious level but I see no testable hypothesis from you or a test that could verify that is true. I have seem good evidence to the contrary. You believe it to be true, so for you it must be true? Please grant me the license to question the validity of your method of belief in determining what is reality, especially since you never move beyond stating your beliefs.

As I have suggested several times in this forum, if you want to ensure there is such a thing as free will then you have a scientific and ethical obligation to provide a testable hypothesis and test it to establish in a scientific manner that there really is something called free will. Just believing there is something called free will is not sufficient to move free will out of the category of things that might seem to be true to some for whatever reason, although not to others, myself included.

So in summary, it seems you have to do two things: 1. Verify that all decisions are made at a conscious level, and 2. Verify there is something called free will (other than just two words that refer to nothing in our physical universe). You have your work cut out for you now. Good luck with your tasks that so far everyone before you has failed at.

Exactly how simple and accidentally obtainable to bloody think the process of consciousness is, anyways?
You act so aloof about the most complex assembly in the universe, by effing far, and absentmindedly brush away the product of that ‘machine+awareness/thinking/qualia’ as a mere illusion, a virtually mistake of happenstance?

Yeah, it’s an illusion, an illusion that gives us the brute power to eliminate every species in existence with the flick of a switch.

Pretty fucking fortunate illusion, I’d say.