"May be"? That inability, the blind spot that you create by assuming freedom requires violation of physical law and cause/effect sequence, is of course what I was referring to - invisibly, to you.
I don't assume it requires violation at all!
That is your miscomprehension of the logic.
The assumption is that freedom is the ability to do other than one must.
If there is no "must" in the assumed universe, if physical law and cause/effect does not create a "must", then there is no issue, and freedom can be concluded to (possibly) exist.
It is only when one introduces that second assumption, the deterministic universe, and what that entails, one can conclude that there is no such freedom in such a universe.
That's it.
The rest of your flight of fancy as to what has been said, your crippling effort as seeing that as assuming the supernatural, is all down to you.
(Meanwhile: "The subject of what you raise" is hash - the more closely read, the less sense it makes. That is - as noted before - a further step toward the apparently inevitable syntax collapse - "them" disagrees in number, and "substance" does not inhabit "the subject", which you have not figured out in the first place. Do you realize how revealing that kind of muddle has become?)
"The subject of what you raise" is not "hash" but quite acceptable English.
You do know what "subject" means, I take it?
I accept that "them" disagrees in number, but who would be so obnoxious as to raise issue over a missing "s"?
And substance, at least one meaning of it, very much does inhabit the subject.
Again, you do know that "substance" has more than one use: a literal and a metaphorical one, I take it?
But to return: None you can recognize, given your assumptions, of course. The degrees of freedom I reference apparently cannot be seen by someone assuming all freedom rests in abrogation of determining cause and determining physical law - you can't even acknowledge logical levels, as if cause and effect at the substrate level could determine pattern.
Oh, I have no doubt you have some arguments waiting in the wings.
It is just that, to date, they are conspicuous by their absence, other than the odd appeal to them.
Whenever you get around to dropping the supernatural assumption you will find more substance appearing - as if by magic.
Whenever you get round to actually providing the substance, maybe you'll stop wasting everyone's time with your fallacious claims regarding the supernatural.
You did. I quoted one of those instances right there in the post. Notice the word "require".
Yet another example of your muddled thinking, and your own inaccurate comprehension of what has been posted.
Or cause/effect sequence, etc.
You define freedom in a deterministic universe as that capability. That's what allows you to "conclude" that it doesn't exist.
I define freedom simply as being devoid of a "must".
If the universe in question (in this case the deterministic one) necessitates a "must" then you do the math.
Can you conclude differently?
Note the assumptions, though: one is a definition of freedom - with no mention or reference to a nature of universe; the second is the nature of the universe.
Now, where is the "supernatural" you are so obsessed with?
I have quoted the exact place in your argument where you do that - several times now. It isn't even always hidden as implicit, but is explicit in your definition of free will - doing other than one must, doing other than what the universe has determined (via cause/effect, physical law, etc), is your definition of "free". Explicitly. In those words. Your posting, and posting you endorsed, both. Several times.
And where you do quote it, as has been explained to you before, you are quoting supplementary arguments, but you are misrepresenting them as primary.
You also assumed it, implicitly, many times, in "concluding" the impossibility of free will in a deterministic universe - which is of course perfectly aligned with your definition, and not surprising. I have quoted all of this, from your posts.
Ah, yes, the implicit assumption in the same way that one implicitly assumes that Socrates is mortal, because, well, after all, we all know men are mortal, so defining socrates as a man we are already assuming him mortal, right?
? You have my posting, which is a layout of your argument, backwards.
I am not referring to that, but to the implication in your complaints of "supernatural".
Shouting? That exclamation point is yours, not mine - you are unable to even quote without screwing up, apparently.
You think I used the term "shouting" because of the exclaimation mark, rather than your cries whenever those appeals don't take hold???
How sad are you?
No, really?
You have referred to logical levels as "handwaving",
No, I have referred to your appeals to them as handwaving.
There is a difference.
denied their existence (the Tesla posts),
Wrong again: I have simply denied that the nature of the freedom is any different to that found in an orbiting Tesla.
and claimed the patterns of behavior resident within higher ones have no degrees of freedom different in kind from a thermostat.
And I'm waiting for you to provide, you know, an actual argument as to why they should be considered different.
To date... nada.
No, I don't think logical levels are going to wow you. I think you have no idea what they are. How else could you overlook the mental processes involved in a driver's choosing from among alternatives as they approach a traffic light? How else could you prove unable to recognize the nature of the degrees of freedom involved in the cascading and feedback looped influence of dreams and memories on physical behavior?
And again you show your lack of comprehension of what is being argued.
They can be as complex and as important to human operation as you want, but they are ultimately irrelevant to the argument presented, simply because they operate within the deterministic universe.
It doesn't mean they don't exist, that they aren't important to the way we perceive ourselves operating, only that it makes no difference to the answer reached of the question asked.
Processes can be as complex as you want, but while they are deterministic, the answer has been reached.
And unless you can show how the complexity somehow enables us to conclude differently... well, you're just being irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.
Certainly just appealing to them, as you have thus far done, is a waste of effort.
So my original estimate of mere months in getting past the supernatural assumption and tackling the subject of freedom in the real world was optimistic. But the situation is not hopeless -
not as long as that kind of frail amnesia is the major support of the supernatural assumption. That's not going to survive even incremental progress in comprehension.
And while you continue to claim you have done one thing while remaining willfully ignorant of every effort to correct you of your (deliberate) misrepresentation, you will be continually arguing against your own strawmen.
And still not getting anywhere.
But pointing to your Tesla posting, thermostat comparison, continued and willful and bizarre inability to address the driver/light illustration, and similar examples of stubbornly maintained obliviousness, does bring the matter closer to a focus. In particular: one can see that what is missing is your argument about such matters - your addressing of the driver/light example, for example. The central role of logical levels - the fact that the arenas of action, the causes and effects, the behaviors and consequences of the decision, are in the driver's mind at various levels and kinds of pattern and feedback and degrees of freedom - will be unavoidable if and when you get around to it. And it's not far away.
As I believe I said from the outset, and which we can presumably add to the list of your own amnesia, I'm not interested in what I consider to be trivial notions of freedom that I don't see addressing the question asked.
Yet still, as predicted, you are but a moth to my flame.
And the world spins uninterrupted.
