Know any good arguments against determinism? How about for Free will.
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I do not think that is a fair critique on determinism. Do you have the free will to not follow the praxeological structure? If not, then there is some sense of determinism, right? Sure, your choices are up to you but the basic structure on means to attain some end is still there, regardless of what choice you have made.
Determinism is: things happen for a reason (causality)
Free will is: things happen without a cause?
Free will appears to me to be a religious idea, which is required to support another religious idea: the existence of evil.
Make sure to check out Mises’s take on determinism in Theory and History.
are you culpable for any of your actions, or are the crimes you commit just a causal result of your environment, genes, etc? Being culpable for your actions is thought of as a fundamental reason to punish people. If you are not culpable for your actions or your decisions then we live in a nihilistic world without meaning, it even makes devoid of meaning your own existential existence in that it was simply determined you would be that way. Why care at all about anything? fuck it go kill everyone cuz you can. go be socialist or fascist cuz who cares? It doesn’t matter if you do anything, just go and die. Personally I am a compatiblist(sp?) in that some things are determined but there is still choice even within that framework. Praxeology is a good means of discovering the framework through which one can then make choices. Tear this down if you want, I am legitimately interested in what you all have to say.
Wittgenstein (Tractus):
1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the factsIn the end it is a semantic game t hat isn’t worh concerning oneself ove. Just abolish the terms and move on with one’s life. There are neither consequences or laws to be gained from any sociological study of such a matter
Making a choice outside the “praxeological framework” would be making a choice without making a choice.
You might as easily make sense of something outside a “logical framework” - by making sense of something without making sense of it.
The opposite of causal determinism isn’t an acceptance of human free will, really, it’s indeterminism. One has to ask whether one’s conception of human ‘free will’ amounts to or necessitates indeterminism. There are ‘compatibilists’ who say that human free will is still possible, because it’s just the ability to choose between two or more weighted outcomes - it’s not the same as omnipotence.
Causal determinism does not entail fatalism, or theological determinism. In fact, they aren’t really compatible, because “fate” or “God” is arbitrary and uncaused.
It might be a bit of a stretch, but one might make the analogy between a mind deliberating various courses of action to a set of superimposed quantum states in physics. Some are more likely than others. Human free will dwells in the domain of assigning greater or lesser weights to these outcomes simultaneously viewed as possible, but unknown and unobservable to anything or anyone but the mind that is contemplating them. When the decision gets made - when the wave function collapses - there are no longer any superimposed states, and a single course of reality emerges as an inevitability in hindsight.
You’re describing “hard” determinism, i.e. we cannot be responsible for what we do because you can always show that it somehow had something to do with who or what you were, and you can’t possibly be responsible for that.
The fact is that we cannot live like that. It’s like nihilism. If nothing means anything, if nothing is better than anything else, then go shove your head in a woodchipper and do us all a favour… 
False dichotomy. Why can’t it be both? If there is a storm and the wind blows a roof tile off my house through the window of my neighbor, then I am responsible for the damages. Causality and responsibility.
And if someone is a dangerous murderer, then you remove him from society. If doesn’t matter what the causal reasons are for the person being that way, there is still responsibility.
We do live in a world without meaning. Meaning is not objective, it is subjective. The question about why to care about anything is a personal matter, which I cannot answer for you, only for myself. But certainly there are possible reasons to act, for example to experience pleasure. What gives me a lot of pleasure is contributing to a peaceful society.
This doesn’t follow logically. You require reasons to act. What reasons do you have to incur pain? It doesn’t seem very pleasant to me to do bad things to others.
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
I do not think that is a fair critique on determinism. Do you have the free will to not follow the praxeological structure? If not, then there is some sense of determinism, right? Sure, your choices are up to you but the basic structure on means to attain some end is still there, regardless of what choice you have made.
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True, in my mind praxeology did a lot in order to assure me that there was indeed no such thing as fee will. Men follow a specific pattern of action; there is no way that they cannot act rationally whilst still being conscious, and when their body is responding to external phenomena.
The world is cause and effect, external factors and the makeup of the brain must necessarily lead to an individual’s decision’s being determined. To believe in free will is to suddenly drop all scientific givens.
Quoted for the astronomic amount of truth.
Thats exactly my point though… that isnt free will though, praxeology is a form of determinism. when we make choices, for example, we do not have the free will to change the praxeological structure (means-ends), it is quite impossible.
Does free will mean the ability to act without having any reason to act - to act without the intention that one’s actions will have a particular outcome in terms of one’s situation, or particular set of potential outcomes - or does it mean the ability to choose between two or more possible courses of action?
If you believe the former, then praxeology refutes free will. If you believe the latter, praxeology is meaningless without free will.
If free will does not mean the ability to choose between two or more possible courses of action, then what would be the correct term for this concept?
Man does not choose between two courses of action, man performs those actions which he values the most. This is law that is necessarily true. Praxeology is not incompatable with determinsim any way one defines it. Even if one can “change his values” then he will only have done this because he values it more, as it is an action in and of itself.
Praxeology: Man will perform those actions which are most important to him out of the options he percieves at any one time. Not, “man will choose his values”
That is well put, but it doesn’t really answer the question. Are we to distinguish between compatibilist free will - “weak” free will, which just means the ability to choose - the ability to act in terms of praxeology - and “hard” or “true” free will in terms of which you can only ever draw illogical circles in the sand? I mean, does anyone really believe in the latter definition? Does anyone think that they have the ability to perceive a most desirable course of action, and then not act in terms of it? You’d have to think you were God, and even then you’re going to have serious problems, aren’t you?
The thing is, there is something that seperates a human from a garden rake, and praxeology only infers it and runs with it from there. Therefore, praxeology fails if it turns out not to exist. I mean, you can’t use praxeology to describe the behaviour of a buffalo herd, can you?
Can the term ‘free will’ not be used synonymously with ‘the ability to choose’? Is that really such an unconventional definition of the term?
“Free will appears to me to be a religious idea, which is required to support another religious idea: the existence of evil.”
That isn’t a religious idea, anymore than going inside a building to hear someone talk is a religious idea. And I think what you mean, in secular terms, is ‘responsibility for an action which is immoral’. Maybe killing or theft or something like that. That there is some agent which does these things. And then you are saying that there is nothing like that. And to suggest this is religious.
On the other hand, most religious people struggle with the problem of evil – since atheists use it as an argument AGAINST religion. Why would God allow the Holocaust? Why did God let my puppy get runover? Some opportunists might use evil as a means to scare people, but I don’t think anyone is willing this concept into existence. In fact, I think religion is only off track when they say arbitrary things like homosexuality or adultery are ‘evil’. Which is not a matter of some party denying responsibility – will anyone deny responsibility? But the lust burning up in their loins, which exists pre-action. That seems like that is their bread and butter, rather than having a monopoly on blaming people for rational reasons. Such as the case of murder or injuries.
Also, many Christian philosophers will say that there is no existence of evil. But, in some cases, an absence of good.
My main point was that
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We can’t doubt about determinism, we can’t say we know about determinism.
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If it is determined, there is no point in arguing. It is the same as two boomboxes pointed at each other.
On the other hand, we can doubt when we have free will. Such as when we are paralysed. Or we cannot move a broken leg. We know that is an absense of some type of will. But we never say it is ‘determined’. Just there is an absence or presence of will in some parts of the body. In everyday life, we know there is ‘less will power’ about resisting things like food, and ‘more will power’ about resisting work or exercise. Somehow there is not an equivalent feeling to each of them. Maybe there is no ‘free will’, but there is greater and lesser freedom. And, in my opinion, people with greater and lesser wills. Hence, things like greater and lesser time preferences. In addition, many species seem to have greater or lesser power for will or resistance to instinct.
Free will seems to be a type of causal mechanism, but one similar to the mind. It is an emergent property like the mind, and of the mind. Something causes it to come into existence: eg, evolution. And this emergent property, to greater or lesser extent at times, to allow choice, cognition, and consciousness about the world. Whereas a rock does not have these characteristics; nor single cell organisms or atoms or probably probably most species. Free will is not an anomoly of physics, but what we call this greater complexity in emergence which gives it new characteristics unavailable before emergence. It is not supposed to be more mysterious than how other organs work. We know the pancreas works differently than other things in physics. In effect, we are like atoms. But we have to live with the facts of being something that emerged from atoms and cells and tissues and so forth. As everything that does.
Logically, you are making the same point as Bill, Nielso. You’re just dressing it up because you believe in libertarians “being nice”. It’s only an aesthetic difference.
He’s saying that if you don’t care about good and bad outcomes - if you can’t see the difference, you shouldn’t be a part of society. So are you. You’re just being nicer about it, but it’s rhetorical. The only difference is that your version is rhetorically tailored for granny’s ears. You’re just leaving unspoken the truth that if you don’t get simultaneous orgasms from being a useful part of society, you can go suck a lemon.
I do enjoy watching your videos, by the way. 
Here’s my take on free will.
and here is why Compatibilism trumps both, hardcore free willists and hardcore determinists:
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People make choices (it’s fuckin damn obvious)
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People are influenced by external/internal factors, psychology, enviroment, genes and gravity etc (it’s obvious too)
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Same old cause and effect chain (not so obvious, but provable)
I personally don’t believe in free will, because there is nothing “free” about our brains that were determined by millions of years of evolution, but then again, we are able to make choices, no matter they are rational or not. So we at least in some sense have an illusion of “free will”.