The Human Soul Likely Doesn't Exist.

Thanks Argument from Free Will Con’s argument is arguing that we have freedom of choice and because we have this choice there probably exists a soul. Hidden Premise The argument contains the hidden premise that compatibilism is likely false. His defense of the first premise is arguing my thesis implies determinism then in his second premise arguing that determinism is false. Yet this is ignoring a philosophy which the majority of philosophers accept [1], compatibilism. This states that “causal determinism is true, but we still act as free, morally responsible agents when, in the absence of external constraints, our actions are caused by our desires” [2]. Or to use Frankfurt’s theory of compatibilism, one is free with their actions align with their second order desires (desires about desires) [3]. Under this theory, the causes of the desires are completely irrelevant to freedom of will. One good reason for negating an incompatibilist conception of free will is Frankfurt’s counterexample. Frankfurt attempts to show the incompatibilist conceptions of free will are flawed. A standard incompatibilism definition is this A person’s act is free if and only if that person could have done otherwise. [ibid] Or the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate [4] Frankfurt points out it is entirely possible for someone to choose something even though the end outcome is determined. Let’s say Jack is going to murder Jill. Jack got the will to murder on his own without any external causes. Now let’s say James wants Jill dead too, but he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty with an actual murder. James notices Jack is going to murder Jill, yet he is unsure if he will truly go through with it. Taking no chances, James drugs Jack and implants a device that will detect if Jack has a change of heart. The device if activated will cause Jack to regain the will to murder Jill. When Jack regains consciousness he follows through on the murder with no change of heart. Jack acted freely, but couldn’t have done otherwise. This thought experiment shows a clear flaw in an incompatibilist view of free will. Thus Con’s premise one is false as the idea that determined electrochemical actions cannot choose is false. On Premise 2 Even assuming compatibilism is false, I find it is better secunda facie to reject both the defense of premise 2 and premise 2 outright. Con gives us a prima facie case for free will, that it is intuitive to think we have free will. Yet this argument assumes we have direct knowledge of our decision making processes. This assumption is highly problematic. Psychologists Nisbett and Wilson in 1977 attempted to demonstrate we are ignorant of the causal processes of our decisions [5]. In short, they demonstrated the placebo effect and that the patients had no idea that their beliefs were the cause of their behavior. Furthermore John Bargh showed the unconscious mind affects our actions. For example, being showed words about the elderly made people more likely to walk slower and being showed words about being rude made it more likely for the subject to interpret the experimenter [6]. This shows we lack the necessary introspection of the causal processes of decision making to accept the argument from common sense. The rebuttal above is not an attempt to demonstrate we don’t have free will, but to show we cannot trust our intuition when it comes to our apparent free decision making. I will now present some reasons to deny premise 2 outright, or at the very least show it needs a more comprehensive defense. One of the biggest problem with Libertarian free will is that it doesn’t seem it’s coherent. It looks like our actions are either caused or uncaused. What is the cause of a certain will? If it has a prior cause then it is not free. Yet if it’s uncaused, then it not even the agent caused it. It would be totally random. Libertarian free will needs something in between being caused and being uncaused, but it doesn’t seem we can coherently come up with something that isn’t caused but isn’t uncaused. It looks like by the law of excluded middle the Libertarian is stuck. Another problem with it is given by the philosopher Galen Strawson called the “Basic argument” [7]. In a nutshell he says a decision is the result of one’s self. I created this debate because my nature is one that likes to debate these subjects. Had my nature been to not like to debate, my decisions would be based on that. However, this implies in order to be free, I must cause myself. I would have to cause my nature, ect. Causing one’s self is a contradiction because to cause yourself, you must have causal power and a will, therefore already have a nature. Nietzsche called this causa sui “the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far.” Conclusion Con’s argument isn’t a bad prima facie case for the soul, yet when we dig deeper we see it is based on flawed assumptions and justifications. Premise one is false, as compatibilism seems to be a sound and better alternative to Con’s conception of free will. The justification for premise 2 is in error as there exist causal processes for decision making we are introspectively ignorant of. Premise 2 itself is flawed because it seems it’s hard to salvage Libertarian freedom. Thank you, now back to Con for his response to my R2. [1] http://philpapers.org... [2] http://www.qcc.cuny.edu... [3] http://www3.nd.edu... [4] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com... I did not include “the ability to act at one’s own discretion.” as this isn’t neccecarly incompatibile with determinism because it makes no statement about the origin of such discretion. [5] http://people.virginia.edu... [6] http://www.yale.edu... [7] https://philosophy.as.uky.edu...