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zossima t1_j8h1xuo wrote

Reply to comment by Foxsayy in “The principle of protecting our own thinking from eavesdroppers is fundamental to autonomy.” – Daniel Dennett debates the sort of free will it’s worth wanting with neuroscientists Patrick Haggard and philosopher Helen Steward by IAI_Admin

My point is the randomness might not be so random when it comes to human agency, perhaps there is room there for decision-making, even if flawed, influenced and at times ineffectual.

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tough_truth t1_j8h5iv8 wrote

>randomness might not be so random when it comes to human agency

This is where the “delusion” comes in, imo. Ultimately, it seems many believers of free will also disbelieve in the laws of physics. You seem to think humans can defy randomness through sheer willpower.

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Foxsayy t1_j8j98yi wrote

>My point is the randomness might not be so random when it comes to human agency

I'm trying to think of a good metaphor for this, unsuccessfully, and I think that might be because there aren't really things that work this way.

Something is either random, or it is not. Although you can bound the domain, they're really isn't an in between. So if you have the set of all things random, and human agency does not fall in that set, then human agency must fall within that set's compliment (the compliment of all random things), which is by definition, things that are not random–that is, systematic, predictable, causal, etc.

Therefore, if human agency and decision making is not entirely random, then it must be nonrandom. So you're either accepting randomness as a given (to some degree) in the universe, in which case it still doesn't allow for free will in the traditional philosophical sense, or you're rejecting that the process is up to randomness, in which case you fall back into determinism. ,

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