I find it very clear. If you can’t really decide because everything was already decided, you don’t have free will. A definition that grass is meat wouldn’t be surprising to me either. It wouldn’t be correct, but it wouldn’t be surprising. I wasn’t talking about what free will is, I was talking about one specific case of what it isn’t.
If you can’t really decide because everything was already decided
You can demarcate the boundary of decisions however you like. My decisions can still be called decisions while being part of a larger system that those are inherited from, or not, depending on how you arbitrarily choose to use the word. Either way it doesn’t change what is actually happening.
The problem with “free will” is that it isn’t used to make claims about what is actually happening. It is undefined, just a vehicle for semantic assertions.
No, I’m trying to express a specific idea. I don’t think Free Will, as normally considered, is a real concept. I think that is why you don’t say what it is; because you only have an idea of what it isn’t, not an idea of what it is, and there is no idea of what it is behind the words.
If this could be put in a way that doesn’t come off as pretentious, sorry if I haven’t figured out how to do that.
I find it very clear. If you can’t really decide because everything was already decided, you don’t have free will. A definition that grass is meat wouldn’t be surprising to me either. It wouldn’t be correct, but it wouldn’t be surprising. I wasn’t talking about what free will is, I was talking about one specific case of what it isn’t.
You can demarcate the boundary of decisions however you like. My decisions can still be called decisions while being part of a larger system that those are inherited from, or not, depending on how you arbitrarily choose to use the word. Either way it doesn’t change what is actually happening.
The problem with “free will” is that it isn’t used to make claims about what is actually happening. It is undefined, just a vehicle for semantic assertions.
I don’t think you can, because it isn’t anything.
Are you trying to sound really deep? “I don’t think you can, because it isn’t anything.” - what kind of pseudo-intellectual stuff is that?
No, I’m trying to express a specific idea. I don’t think Free Will, as normally considered, is a real concept. I think that is why you don’t say what it is; because you only have an idea of what it isn’t, not an idea of what it is, and there is no idea of what it is behind the words.
If this could be put in a way that doesn’t come off as pretentious, sorry if I haven’t figured out how to do that.