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Richard Johns's avatar

Philosopher here. If I may, I would like to make three suggestions.

1. While even many philosophers are unaware of this, there are good arguments that events can be caused without being determined by those causes. I've summarised these arguments here: https://iweb.langara.ca/rjohns/files/2021/06/19_Causation_Determination.pdf The TLDR version is that determination is a logical relation, something like predictability by Laplace's demon, whereas causation is a concrete relation of ontological dependence, i.e. "bringing into existence", and quantum experiments suggest that causation often works indeterministically.

2. Many (e.g. Sapolsky) adopt a physicalist view of nature, according to which the world is conceptually transparent to a being like Laplace's demon. Human beings, for example, are just complex systems composed of fields, particles, etc. that can all be precisely represented in mathematical terms. I agree that, within a physicalist perspective, libertarian free will is nonsense -- as Nietzsche said. But there are good arguments that physicalism cannot account for consciousness or intentionality (i.e. rational understanding) which are both essential for free will. See for example my argument here: https://iweb.langara.ca/rjohns/files/2023/12/Johns_2020_-accepted.pdf

3. If I'm right that intentionality is incompatible with the world being conceptually transparent to Laplace's demon, then a world containing beings like us cannot be deterministic either. When our actions are caused by our beliefs and desires, then Laplace's demon cannot predict them. There is then no need to attribute inconsistent beliefs to "the folk", as you do here.

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Stephen Schecter's avatar

For a wonderful literary exploration of this topic readers might enjoy Robert Musil's A Man Without Qualities, where the disastrous implications of letting people off the hook in the name of utopian impulses is painfully and ironically explored.

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