/philosophy/ - Philosophy

Hegel: self-determination

The slightly more specific version: the mind necessarily is an embodied mind, however that body itself does not determine the contents of the mental realm. No amount of mechanics equations generates life or consciousness merely from themselves.

Long story: read Hegel, or better, listen to Winfield's lectures on life and mind in nature. Prepare to take notes and follow arguments.

https://archive.org/details/lifemindnature

>>4412

Now hold on, an ordered determined world does not in any way negate free will.

Your conscious perspective is like the helmsman of a ship who can steer the boat one way or the other. Neither decision is random, neither of the outcomes are random. The path your consciousness travels down is determined by your will.

>>4416

Is your will undetermined?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

u moron

>>4416

Moronic answer. The problem of free will is not that will does not determine, but that will is not the final determiner of itself.

>>4418

Compatibilism is the only coherent answer, yet only the conception of self-determination as really possible and existent makes it so. Standard accounts of compatibilism are just determinisms that try to side-step the problem of ultimate determination of the agent's reasoning. That the will wills what it wills and sees itself free in its will is not what is questioned, but how the will can really be the source of its own determination.

>>4416

I guess I see your point if you're considering the consciousness as a process rather than a single thing able to create will, which seems more accurate. I should have specified "free" as "free from the determined course of the physics of the universe" and not "free from your own thoughts".

>>4414

As for self-determination, I didn't research it a ton but it sounds like it asserts that there are aspects of the human mind outside of the physical world, kind of like Cartesian dualism. This is cool and I'd like to add it as a third item on the list, but I still have a problem with it. If the soul does exist in some different layer of reality, wouldn't it still be under the deterministic effects of that world, or else based on some random number generator in that metaphysical dimension? Like even if it's not a part of our reality, I don't see how it can really evade being one of the two. Again, I didn't research it super well, so anyone can feel free to correct me on the specifics of self-determination.

>>4418

So if I read that correctly, compatibilism is saying that you do not have free will to decide what you want to do, however you do have free will to decide how you want to do it. This still believes in some free will, just like, low fat free will. The mechanisms by which free will come about are not actually discussed by the concept though, so it seems like a dead end to me.

>>4430

Self-determination concerns one realm of determination. What components allow for self-determination only serve as necessary conditions of its existence, but not of its inner function. Just as your computer can be composed of a myriad different components of different brands which may determine how fast and how much it can do, the realm of actual computation is in the software and it works as it does within its own systematic form. Windows is still going to work as windows whether you run on 10 year old AMD or top of the line modern Intel.

>>4419

>Moronic answer. The problem of free will is not that will does not determine, but that will is not the final determiner of itself.

Recursive, therefore paradox. The will determines the will which determines the will which determines the....

Yeah, nope.

>>4419

>Compatibilism is the only coherent answer

Nope.

Compatibilism has been shredded by multiple commentators.

>>4412

>There just has to be some more options here.

Determinism is true, but there's a thing which gives you all the things you wanted free will for. I like to call it agency. Call it an object lesson on defining your terms properly.