Does True Randomness Actually Exist? ( ^&*#^%$&#% )

sooo true. and i know who hijacked it. sooo yucky.

Feel like I’m on a mission to de-obfuscate this topic.. lol.

So now that we’ve made the distinction between ontic and epistemic, we can clearly see why relentless epistemic arguments in a thread about determinism vs true randomness amount to nothing but hijacking and trolling.

And if anyone is new to this topic, I want to be crystal clear.. it is concerned with an ontic question about whether reality is deterministic or fundamentally random, one that is taken very seriously in both philosophical and scientific circles.

Anyhow, next I’m going to try and untangle another related question. (when time permits)

Do we have free will?

physically ? ...i dont feel so but not sure. consciously ? ...maybe.

I don’t know what you mean by the distinction between physically vs consciously and don’t feel like guessing. generally speaking there are two main camps when it comes to FW which i refer to as compatibilists and libertarians, and the fault line between them is what FW even means, which leads me to the important term “could have done otherwise”.

libertarians claim that in order to be considered free our choices must have genuine alternatives, and if all else were equal we could have chosen otherwise.

compatibilists claim that as long as our choices are according to our own will, they are considered free, regardless of whether we could or couldn’t have chosen otherwise. (basically expressing agency)

that’s why FW is so closely related to the topic of determinism. the notion of a fixed future kills FW in the libertarian view while the compatibilist view is compatible with determinism.

any questions so far? lol

I was thinking how to simplify the libertarian vs. compatibilist distinction even further, and because both camps talk about “free will” while meaning very different things. It's like two people talking about football, but one watching the Super Bowl, and the other the World Cup.

So let's stop sharing the word and label it accordingly.. CFW for compatibilist free will, LFW for libertarian free will.

Now the whole distinction can simply read..

CFW asks whether the choice came from you.
LFW asks whether the choice itself could have been different.

Or to take it up a notch..

CFW asks whether the choice was produced by your own reasoning, desires, values, etc (in a non coerced way).
LFW asks whether, with everything exactly the same, a different choice was still genuinely possible.

Happy 250! ..I meant 4th! 😀

I hear the voices.. cut the crap j! do we have free will or not? lol

well, now that we distinguished between CFW and LFW, it solely depends on which FW you care about, the compatibilist or the libertarian version.

If you mean compatibilist free will, then the answer is a definite yes. full stop. we do have free will. our choices stem from our own reasoning, desires, psychology, individualism, and decision making process. and for better or worse we own them as free agents, regardless of whether we could have done otherwise.

but if you mean libertarian free will and want the ability to genuinely choose otherwise under the exact same conditions, mood, etc.. good luck. My own take is that it is very unlikely. although strictly speaking it is still an open question, but maybe one that cannot even be answered in principle.

just to touch on it briefly.. even if true randomness exists, it does not help libertarians much. random outcomes are not free choices and do not arise from our individuality in the relevant way. so LFW require something that is neither determined nor random, and I have never heard of a coherent mechanism that satisfies that requirement. in a convincing way..

just had Fable 5 draft a list of major thinkers and where do they land on the FW topic in reference to libertarian and compatibilist categories. I haven’t checked it properly, so it should be treated for what it is. an initial draft..

FREE WILL: WHO SAYS WHAT?

"Do we have free will?" sounds like one question, but the answer depends entirely on what "free will" means. People routinely argue yes or no without saying which definition they're defending. This list separates the two major meanings and sorts each thinker by the definition they use and the verdict they give.

THE TWO DEFINITIONS IN PLAY:

LFW (libertarian free will) — you could genuinely have done otherwise: given the exact same past and laws of nature, more than one choice was open, and the choice was ultimately yours.

CFW (compatibilist free will) — acting from your own motives, reasoning, and values, without coercion, regardless of whether the future is already fixed. Fully compatible with determinism.

1. YES TO LFW — GENUINE ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES EXIST

Human choices are not fully fixed by prior causes; real alternatives exist and the agent settles them.

PHILOSOPHERS

Epicurus (341–270 BC) — atoms randomly "swerve," making room for agency (the explicit free-will reading owes much to Lucretius)

Alexander of Aphrodisias (~200 AD) — the first fully worked-out libertarian theory (Carneades has a rival claim)

Descartes (1596–1650) — the will is infinite and undetermined

Thomas Reid (1710–1796) — agent causation: persons, not prior events, cause actions

Kant (1724–1804) — noumenal freedom outside deterministic nature; called compatibilism a "wretched subterfuge"

Peirce (1839–1914) — tychism: real chance is built into nature

William James (1842–1910) — sided with chance; coined "soft determinism" as an insult

Bergson (1859–1941) — "Time and Free Will": lived duration can't be reduced to deterministic clock-time

C.A. Campbell (1897–1974) — contra-causal freedom shows itself in moral effort

Popper (1902–1994) — an open, indeterministic universe with mind–brain interaction

Sartre (1905–1980) — "condemned to be free"; radical freedom (phenomenological rather than causal)

Libet (1916–2007) — believed the conscious veto ("free won't") was real and undetermined, even though his readiness-potential experiments became the skeptics' favorite evidence

Chisholm (1916–1999) — each agent a "prime mover unmoved"

Ginet (1932–) — non-causal libertarianism: free choices are uncaused

Searle (1932–2025) — edge case: found the felt reality of free will undeniable but admitted he couldn't explain how it fits nature

Kane (1938–2024) — "self-forming actions" amplify indeterminacy into character; the most rigorous modern version

van Inwagen (1942–) — the Consequence Argument against compatibilism; calls free will a mystery we nonetheless have

Lowe (1950–2014) — agent causation, non-Cartesian dualism

O'Connor (1965–) — leading contemporary agent-causation theorist

Steward (1965–) — agency itself is incompatible with determinism; animals included

Ekstrom — event-causal libertarianism

SCIENTISTS WHOSE WORK IS USED TO ARGUE FOR INDETERMINISM AND AGENCY

Eddington (1882–1944) — first major scientist to claim quantum mechanics reopens the question

Compton (1892–1962) — the brain can amplify quantum indeterminacy into free choice

Eccles (1903–1997) — dualist interactionism: mind acts on synapses through quantum-scale events

Dyson (1923–2020) — "mind is already inherent in every electron"

Stapp (1928–) — quantum Zeno effect; mind chooses which questions to pose

Penrose (1931–) & Hameroff (1947–) — Orch-OR: non-computable collapse in microtubules (the free-will spin is mostly Hameroff's; Penrose stays coy)

Conway (1937–2020) & Kochen (1934–) — the Free Will Theorem: if experimenters have it, particles do too

Zeilinger (1945–) — experimenter freedom as a working assumption of quantum physics — exactly what superdeterminism denies

Tse (1962–) — criterial causation; a rare neuroscientist arguing for strong free will

Mitchell — "Free Agents" (2023): evolved agency harnessing indeterminacy; debated Sapolsky directly

2. NO TO LFW — THAT KIND OF FREEDOM DOES NOT EXIST

Given the same past and laws of nature, the outcome was not open in the required sense. Many here also argue CFW redefines the question rather than answering it.

HISTORICAL

Spinoza (1632–1677) — everything follows from nature's necessity; his "freedom = understanding necessity" quietly relocates freedom the way compatibilists do

d'Holbach (1723–1789) — strict materialist determinism; the Enlightenment's Sapolsky

Priestley (1733–1804) — discovered oxygen, defended "The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity"

Laplace (1749–1827) — the demon; determinism's mascot

Schopenhauer (1788–1860) — "man can do what he wills but cannot will what he wills"

Twain (1835–1910) — "What Is Man?": man as machine

Freud (1856–1939) — psychic determinism; the unconscious does the choosing

Darrow (1857–1938) — argued determinism against retributive punishment in the Leopold & Loeb sentencing, and won life instead of the rope

Skinner (1904–1990) — "Beyond Freedom and Dignity"; behaviorism's frontal assault

Crick (1916–2004) — "you're nothing but a pack of neurons"

CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHERS

Honderich (1933–) — near-hard determinism; give up "life-hopes" based on origination

Galen Strawson (1952–) — the Basic Argument: you'd have to be causa sui, and nothing is

Pereboom (1957–) — hard incompatibilism; his four-case manipulation argument targets compatibilism directly too

Smilansky — no libertarian free will, but the illusion of it is socially necessary, so skeptics should keep quiet

Levy (1967–) — "Hard Luck": luck undermines responsibility on compatibilist accounts as well

Caruso — skeptic about both definitions; public-health quarantine model of punishment

SCIENTISTS & PUBLIC FIGURES

Einstein (1879–1955) — Spinozist determinist; kept Schopenhauer's line as lifelong consolation

Schrödinger (1887–1961) — determinist with a Vedanta escape hatch: "I" am the universe, so I do move the atoms

Hawking (1942–2018) — free will as an illusion, an "effective theory"

't Hooft (1946–) — superdeterminism via cellular automata

Wegner (1948–2013) — "The Illusion of Conscious Will"

Coyne (1949–) — biological determinism

Blackmore (1951–) — illusionism about will and self

Sapolsky (1957–) — "Determined": every choice traces back to causes and luck

Greene (1963–) — no freedom for particles; allows emergent "behavioral repertoires"

Harris (1967–) — insists the free will people feel is the libertarian kind, and calls compatibilism a change of subject

Harari (1976–) — free will as liberalism's founding myth

Hossenfelder (1976–) — superdeterminism; treats compatibilist freedom as relabeling (Bell named the superdeterminism loophole — and rejected it as conspiratorial)

Alex O'Connor (1999–) — the popular/YouTube wing of free-will skepticism

3. YES TO CFW — FREEDOM IS ACTING FROM YOURSELF

Free will doesn't require standing outside causality. What matters is whether the action flows from the person's own reasoning, desires, and values rather than compulsion.

PHILOSOPHERS

Chrysippus (279–206 BC) — the cylinder: pushed, but rolls according to its own shape

Epictetus (50–135 AD) — the dichotomy of control; freedom relocated inward

Hobbes (1588–1679) — liberty is the absence of external impediment

Locke (1632–1704) — the locked room: freedom concerns the man, not the will; direct ancestor of Frankfurt cases

Leibniz (1646–1716) — motives "incline without necessitating"

Hume (1711–1776) — the classic reconciliation of liberty and necessity

Mill (1806–1873) — refined and carried the Humean line

Hobart (1868–1963) — the 1934 paper: free will requires determinism (pen name of Dickinson S. Miller)

Schlick (1882–1936) — the whole dispute is a pseudo-problem, born of confusing laws of nature with laws of the state

Ayer (1910–1989) — "Freedom and Necessity"; the compact modern statement

P.F. Strawson (1919–2006) — reactive attitudes; responsibility needs no metaphysics

Frankfurt (1929–2023) — hierarchical desires; Frankfurt cases against "could have done otherwise"

Dennett (1942–2024) — the heavyweight; "Elbow Room", "Freedom Evolves"

Watson (1943–) — free agency is acting on your values

Wolf (1952–) — the sanity condition; asymmetry between praise and blame

Fischer (1952–) — semicompatibilism; guidance control

Pinker (1954–) — determinism is no threat to responsibility

List (1973–) — "Why Free Will Is Real": agency at higher levels of description

Vihvelin — dispositional compatibilism: we can do otherwise, properly understood

Vargas — revisionism: concedes the folk concept is LFW-flavored, argues to revise it openly

Nahmias — experimental philosophy against "willusionism"

Ismael — "How Physics Makes Us Free"

SCIENTISTS

Planck (1858–1947) — a special case: strict determinist about nature who held that your own will can never be predicted from inside — determined viewed from outside, free from the standpoint of the acting subject (1932); he filed the traditional dispute under "phantom problems"

Gazzaniga (1939–) — responsibility lives at the social level, not in the brain

Deutsch (1953–) — free will is real in the emergent-explanatory sense

Rovelli (1956–) — decisions determined by internal states is all "freedom" ever meant

Carroll (1966–) — poetic naturalism: free will is real at the emergent level

Schurger — reinterpreted Libet: the readiness potential is random noise crossing a threshold, not a decision already made

4. NO VERDICT — AGNOSTICS, MYSTERIANS, FRAME-REJECTORS

Undecided, convinced the problem exceeds human understanding, or hostile to the framing itself.

Aristotle (384–322 BC) — both camps still claim him

Nietzsche (1844–1900) — rejects the frame: causa sui is "the best self-contradiction ever conceived," but "unfree will" is mythology too; there are only strong and weak wills

Chomsky (1928–) — mysterian: treats free will as an evident fact of experience whose explanation is cognitively closed to us

Nagel (1937–) — "The View from Nowhere": the problem may simply have no solution

McGinn (1950–) — mysterian, same camp as Chomsky

Mele (1951–) — official agnostic; dismantles the neuroscience arguments from neutral ground

Balaguer — libertarianism is coherent; whether we have it is an open empirical question he declines to call

Fable and Gemini flirting with moral responsibility 😀