Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-27713488-20180327004110/@comment-31763506-20180409071751

Well, as flame wars go, this is remarkably civilized.

I really need to do some chores and go to bed so I'll try and make sure this is my last post on this this evening.

The first problem of indeterministic free will is that it has to bridge the immense gulf between the Quantum level where indeterministic events are believed to happen and the level of neurological function where biologists and psychologists observe the mind working. Even if you can do that, "I chose to stab the guy because of the random activity of electrons in the neurons of my brain, and if they had done something different, I might not have stabbed him." doesn't really solve the problem you were looking to solve, which was "Where does my agency come from if my behavior is the result of the laws of the physical universe?".

Indeterminism means that some things happen by chance, and "I rolled a 1 on my 'not stabbing the guy' check" is in some ways even worse that "the universe made me do it".

The discussion of the moral aspects of our hypothetical stabbing is getting two issues confused. One is the moral justification of the stabbing, which is almost entirely mixed up in the circumstances of the events leading to it. (Card would claim that the intention of the person who did it was the most important factor in judging its morality, but this is obviously wrong even if you make the artificial distinction of the intention of the actor being separate from the other circumstances.) The other is the question of whether the person doing the stabbing had a "real choice".

LordCyberforte contrasts the experience of watching a movie with playing TLS, highlighting the degree of freedom the player has in controlling the story to emphasize the agency of the person experiencing the latter, but that's once again positing an external observer. It doesn't address the question of how the person watching the movie or playing the game feels that they have agency living their lives in the universe. And that was actually the whole point. There's no you that exists outside of the physical universe to choose how to react to what happens to you.

The activity of making those choices is part of what makes "you".