I get depressed .....

I wasn't referring to what cupcakes was arguing, only that you and I disagreed over the idea that libertarian free will is the only version worth considering. 

I doubt very seriously if he gives two hoots what I would think of his views on free will. 

Will try to watch tomorrow; too close to my bedtime now.

You must be very happy Catman, being surrounded by all that pussy.

I got to "make any decision that isn't constrained by the laws of physics".  Not sure who he is trying to convince other than Great Objective Morals and other religious types.   That just doesn't yield we're not deciding and doing.

Here's one for you to diddle with:

---

Not at all, because it's better for me to suffer than for a greater number of people to suffer.

1.If you are not a neuroscientist then why are you are so sure consciousness is seperate.
2.The fact that you will not find any neuroscienist saying "We found concsiousness" speaks for itself.

There's no free will defender or definition of free will that implies conscious awareness.

People have kids for evil reasons, and for excuses to do evil. The worst atrocities and most unprovoked evils are committed by family men. Concentration camps, war atrocities, all of them. They speak like they have honorable goals, but they seek only "justification" for their "rationalization". It's much of the reason the wrong men are let out of prison too easy.


So, it boils down to more of the hatefulness of this "world". Danged if you do, danged if you don't. No one wins. Depressing if you value this world. Not depressing if you don't value this inferior system brought about by inferior minded devils with no inspiration and no strategy. I wouldn't want to bring a child into this world.

I always have the same response to such things: how can you tell the difference between ontological reality and epistemic ignorance? They generally feel the same. When we flip a coin, it feels as if the odds of it landing on heads is ontologically 50/50, yet we know because of General Relativity the odds are 100/0 and the 50/50 is only expressing our epistemic limitations. Who's to say that our perception of "free" will isn't the same? BTW, I'm not even saying it is, I'm just saying I don't know how one proposes we tell the difference beyond trusting whatever the physics seem to suggest. 

OK, I watched the video. There's a whole lot I disagree with. 

First, I want to go all the way back as to why the concept of free will exists at all: we make choices and perceive other possible choices. Free will can either be descriptive, as in something that only refers to this act/perception (perhaps only under certain circumstances), or it can be theoretical, as in the thing that allows us to make the choices. Just because the latter became dominant due to the influence of theology doesn't invalidate the former, nor do I think the latter is always what's meant by free will either from the average person nor from the countless people who've discussed it.

To get to his points, the kind of free will cared about in courts has nothing to do with physical determination and everything to do with whether a healthy brain made a choice without another brain exerting coercion. It doesn't matter that there's no material difference between drinking milk when thirsty and giving money at gunpoint because materiality isn't what we're concerned with in that case. We're concerned with the morality of (to put it in material terms) one brain forcing a choice upon another with the consequence of one being death, which is something nobody wants to face, and in which circumstances most everyone would choose the same thing. If you aren't advocating that we punish someone who acted under threat of death, then clearly you perceive some difference between the two.

In the second version he's basically just saying we shouldn't use free will in its descriptive version. He asks what's "free" about it and I'd say "the same that's "free" about people living with the right to free speech." Should we eliminate the concept of free speech because what we say is as physically determined as what we do?

I agree with his objection to #3.

#4 is basically a reiteration of 1 and 2 in different forms, so I don't think I have anything new to say here.

He's right that the compatibilism/incompatibilism debate is semantic, but I think an important thing to realize is that free will is hardly the only term we use that describes things we experience on a macro level that has no material existence beyond that. That applies as much to baseball and temperature (to steal from Sean Carroll) as it does to free will. It even applies to math and, yes, free speech. We don't live our lives on the level of fundamental particles, and no matter how much we are made and determined by them we still need language that refers to our experiences as much, if not more, than language that refers to fundamental matter. Under yours and Coyne's view, you might as well eliminate the word "free" from the language as there is no such thing. I'm no more free than someone in prison, eg.

Finally, we've been over how stupid I find the notion that compatibilism was invented to prevent people from freaking out about determinism and there being no libertarian free will. Abstruse philosophy arguments don't freak people out because most don't care. Whether Dennett et al. are concerned about that is irrelevant because it's a silly concern. Just like most of us were fine/got over evolution, the same is/would be true of free will. Besides, compatibilism has been around in some form for centuries; it wasn't exactly invented in light of modern physics.

As to the compatibilism/Theology comparison, it's mostly just stupid. For a quick rundown:

1. Old terms get redefined regularly in common language. This is a common feature all languages share and is unique to neither compatibilism nor Theology. Further, neither God nor free will have ever been clearly defined to begin with, which is one reason there's so much disagreement about both.

2. Yeah, definitions can change when facts change and certain definitions are proved untrue. This is only a problem when we're claiming what was disproved still physically exists as with God. Redefining free will is closer to the redefinition of planet.

3. Been over the silliness of that, but also not unique to compatibilism/Theology as it's arguably a bigger factor in politics.

4. I don't think compatibilism necessarily sets humans aside as special.

5. First, no way is there more versions of compatibilism as there are for God. Second, so what? There are tons of versions of plenty of concepts like "good" and "bad."

6. Compatibilism doesn't dismiss science. Saying science is useless for determining how we define terms isn't dismissing science. If compatibilism was dismissing science it would be libertarianism.

Yes, though I think the only part unique to libertarianism is the "whose output is to some degree undetermined" part, and that's what would conflict with physics; the rest seems to be a general description of decision making that isn't in conflict with physics.