Small thought experiment illustrating the problems when talking about laws of nature negating free will.

Surely a person cannot will to teleport with no other aid, but they may similarly be unable to choose a salad over a cheeseburger, given the sum of their experiences.

There's no necessary connection between these two things is the point I'm making. Natural laws are necessary for us to know things and have the ability to make a decision. I could not choose a salad over a cheeseburger if salads randomly became able to give you cancer or cheeseburgers randomly grew wings and flew away. The existence of natural law and regularities and things like physical constraints is a necessary part of the architecture of making decisions.

And what does it mean to say a person can't choose given the sum of their experiences? How can an entity choose or make a decision without a finite logical process of evaluating their previous experience? IF someone holds a gun to my head and says "Eat the cheeseburger" is this the same as me selecting a cheeseburger because I like cheeseburgers?

To try to illustrate what I'm getting at with this experiment, which of these propositions would you say is true:

0a. The battery operates deterministically 0b. The battery does not operate deterministically

1a. The battery can choose a mode of operation based on what the host computer is doing 1b. The battery cannot choose a mode of operation based on what the host computer is doing

2a. The battery controls its mode of operation using its internal hardware 2b. The battery does not control its mode of operation using its internal hardware

Out of each pair of propositions, only one can be true. It's not necessary to invoke free will or moral responsibility for this question.

/r/philosophy Thread Parent