Exhibiting the physical capability of responding to a decision criterion having more than one possible value (in the assessment of the decider) with more than one mutually exclusive decision (made by the decider).
So a subjective view that there is more than one, even though in a deterministic system there can not be mor. Okay, so you're going by mere subjective viewpoint. I get that. It's what I said you were doing from the get go.
It's not rocket science: A driver approaches a traffic light
It's actually very close to rocket science - both are deterministic systems where for each input there is just one predetermined output. And every time you reference a driver approaching traffic lights you simply reinforce that you are taking a subjective view of there being more than one genuine possibility.
So yes, a driver approaches a traffic light, and for the specific inputs to their decision-making system, a predetermined output results. No actual ability to do otherwise, only the imagined ability.
The decider is faced with several possible inputs...
Nope, the system is already in play and there is only a single set of inputs from the getgo.
and must be ready to choose the output.
They can certainly think they're choosing the output, but they're not. All they're doing is fulfilling the predetermined nature of the system. The output was determined by the inputs and the system.
That is their predetermined nature, a key part of the process by which their behavior and that of the universe as a whole is determined (we are assuming it is)
Indeed, the process that we refer to as "choice" or "decision making" is most certainly a key part. But there is no freedom within it: predetermined input, predetermined steps within the process, predetermined output.
We are observing physical reality, and analyzing it with our best theory. Rigorously.
But what you are analysing is a sense of free will that is judged only by the appearance and sensation of having genuine alternatives. You aren't ever addressing whether that appearance is what is actually going on. Which is fine. As far as it goes.
You can of course dismiss all of science as "appearances" - but your determinism is thrown out along with the rest: nothing but "appearances" supports these notions of cause and effect, physical law, and so forth.
Everything is an appearance, of course, if we are to observe it, but in most cases the appearance is backed up by our understanding and evidence of what is really going on. In the case of free will there is no such support. The understanding of the appearance stops there, at the point of appearance.
Meanwhile: We have not yet begun to discuss the degrees of freedom involved in such things as nonsupernatural human decisions, because you guys are still denying - by assumption - that there are any.
You can discuss what you want. Noone is stopping you. I'm not. Baldeee certainly isn't as from what I gather you're on his ignore list. And given the repetitious nature of your desire to bring up the supernatural, I can see his point. Feel free to discuss what you want. We have a different notion of what free will is to you. We ask the question of whether we really do have the ability to pick from genuine alternatives, not just imagined alternatives. And guess what: we
conclude that we don't. Which, for whatever reason known only to you, you see as an assumption of the supernatural. Hey ho.
In basic engineering analysis, in principle, the differences are so large that one of the analyses is simple algebra and the other impossible with our current mathematics and capabilities. They are large differences in quality, logical level, and complexity - similar to the differences between a living and dead dog, as a system, or a rock and a bacterium.
You guys call that "trivial".
In this regard it is. The difference between the living and dead are reasonably well understood, and none of the processes involved go contrary to that understanding. Different, yes, certainly when emergent properties arise. Free will, on the other hand, "the ability to select from among alternatives", goes very much contrary to the underlying nature of the processes involved. It's not just that the underlying processes don't work that way, but they actually work contrary. That is the difference. So yes, your examples are relatively trivial.
You keep making that same silly, question-begging assumption - that only the supernatural can possess "actual", "genuine", etc, freedom. How long are you going to waste time repeating that?
Yet you (and I guess by extension JamesR) are the only one who ever mentions the supernatural. Go figure. Do you badger those who conclude that ghosts don't exist of the making the same silly, question-begging assumption that only the supernatural can be ghosts? No. Seriously, iceaura, your obsession with this fallacy of yours is truly pathetic, and not just because of your inability to recognise the difference between assumption and conclusion.
And given that I haven't once assumed the supernatural, and have no intention of doing so, I'm going to have quite some trouble repeating it.
