If applicable, what ages did you stop believing in the following things, and why?
1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
3. God(s) and deities
4. Free will
inb4 fedora reddit whatever bullshit. I didn't even say here that you shouldn't believe in these things. I'm just trying to get a conversation going.
I still believe in all but goblins, elves, vampires and fairies. That's literally just Tolkien tier fiction.
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never believed
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Never believed
>3. God(s) and deities
Became skeptical about 13, completely rejected beliefs by 14
>4. Free will
Early 20s
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never did
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Never did
>3. God(s) and deities
13-ish
>4. Free will
I still believe in free will. Most people are just stupid and let biology and feelings run them.
>>27141005
1. Never believed
2. Around 12 or 13
3. Still do
4. Still do
1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never believed.
2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Believe in ghosts, don't believe in vampires or demons.
3. God(s) and deities
15
4. Free will
Recently
>>27141208
>I still believe in free will. Most people are just stupid and let biology and feelings run them.
Wait a minute. We're biological creatures. How can we possibly transcend biology?
>>27141005
> Fairies, goblins, and elves
Don't remember believing in these things.
> Ghosts, vampires, and demons
I remember believing in ghosts and monsters. Ended during middle school, around 12.
>God(s) and deities
13ish
>Free will
At some point, I realized the question of whether we had free will was irrelevant and had no practical significance, and likely never would. Probably around the end of high school, 16-17.
I take the same stance toward god/deities. They could exist, but if they do, they have no observable significance.
>>27141005
Never believed
Never believed
Never (really) believed
Still believe - Free will is compatible with a determined universe, it's just what we call it when an agent fulfills certain psychological conditions when acting (eg not being coerced)
oh god please post more captcha comics
I haven't seen them in years
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never believed
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Never believed
>3. God(s) and deities
Never believed
>4. Free will
That's way too complex for me to bother working out
1. Never believed.
2. Believed in ghosts until I was 8, but was still somehow afraid of the possibility of their existence.
3. Devout Christian until the age of 13 when I began to make friends of different ethnic backgrounds and began to read the bible on my own only to realize it was bulshit.
4. Until recently actually (2 years ago). I had always debated and even so much as argued for free will until I began to realize the truth the hard way.
>>27141987
>At some point, I realized the question of whether we had free will was irrelevant and had no practical significance, and likely never would. Probably around the end of high school, 16-17.
How did you come to that conclusion? I've come to a very different conclusion.
To me, my lack of belief in free will has changed the way I relate to others and myself. It's altered how I behave a lot. The difference it's made in my thinking and acting is considerable.
>>27141005
1. Around 6
2. Never
3. Around 14 or 15.
4 Meh.
>>27141994
>Still believe - Free will is compatible with a determined universe, it's just what we call it when an agent fulfills certain psychological conditions when acting (eg not being coerced)
That's compatibilist free will and it's a really different thing from libertarian free will. Completely different.
Also, what's "coercion"?
Let's say we have a determined universe. Everything is set. This is what a lot of compatibilists believe.
So in this hypothetical deterministic universe, there's a serial killer. The reason why he's a serial killer is because he feels the compulsion to kill due to the structure of his brain.
I'm calling that coercion. He is coerced by his biology, just as if there were a person with a gun to his head. I don't see a meaningful difference between "internal" and "external" coercion.
>>27142246
>my lack of belief in free will has changed the way I relate to others and myself. It's altered how I behave a lot. The difference it's made in my thinking and acting is considerable.
Can you elaborate a bit on this please? I'm curious
>>27142246
You could always choose among the choices you perceived.
Free will just controlled whether someone else could predict your choice, not what that choice was.
>>27142343
>You could always choose among the choices you perceived.
No, I don't believe that's true. You've presented no evidence for this idea.
Say I have the "choice" between coffee or tea in the morning.
I don't think I can use something called "free will" to make it coffee or tea. I think my circumstances (the state of my brain particularly) will compel me to pick one or the other. Let's say I picked tea.
I see no evidence I actually could have picked coffee. It's more like I discovered that I was going to pick tea, rather than coffee being an actual possibility given the exact same conditions.
>Free will just controlled whether someone else could predict your choice, not what that choice was.
I'm not sure I understand you here.
>>27141005
>1 & 2:
Too young to remember
>3
15 years old
>4
12 years old
Free will made no sense to me when I was religious. Logic: if God knows what is going to happen, then everything is determined
I believed in free will again briefly once I became an athiest until I realized that the universe doesn't need God to be deterministic. What a ride.
>>27142329
I'm more careful about what I say, because I think my words can have huge consequences for other people, and they can't just use "free will" to undo the effect my words will have on them.
I feel a lot more compassion for the homeless because I believe they're homeless due to circumstances--their genetics, how they were raised, their intelligence, the economy, whatever. I feel for them because I no longer believe they could have used "free will" to just make it.
I pretty much stopped believing in retribution, too.
>>27142327
I'm fully aware of the different kinds of free will, I have a phd in philosophy from an ivy league(lmao gl with job I know). I decided 4chan wasn't the best place to sperg out with freshman level free will stuff. My point could be read as saying that the most commonly understood meaning of 'free will' - how the term is used to ascribe blame and praise - relies on compatibilist understanding that I don't think any person should have reason to doubt.
Ps your attempt at putting pressure on my use of coercion didn't make sense, as it seems incredibly far fetched to call brain structure coercion. Perhaps you were going for a Frankfurt style case where someone could alter the killers brain structure, even then, I personally am willing to bite the bullet and suggest free will is not a historic concept.
>>27142406
We have differing definitions of what "choice" means.
>I don't think I can use something called "free will" to make it coffee or tea.
But you can still choose coffee or tea.
>I think my circumstances (the state of my brain particularly) will compel me to pick one or the other.
You are your brain. You indeed compel yourself to pick.
>I see no evidence I actually could have picked coffee.
Indeed, someone could predict you would choose tea with absolute certainty.
That doesn't mean it was impossible at the time for you to choose tea if you wanted to, you just didn't want to. You predictably didn't want to choose tea.
You can still do what you want, it's just what you want is predictable.
Moreover, it's not like an entity can really know they have free will (they could just be living in a simulation and not know it). All they can know is nothing has disproved their free will thus far.
>>27142406
>requiring the principle of alternate possibilities for free will
>laughing compatibilists.png
>>27142436
Regardless of whether they are ultimately correct or not, it's pretty great that your views helped you become a better person
>>27141005
>fairies goblins elves
Never really believed to start with
>ghosts vampires demons
Again never really believed
>god/deity
When I was ~10, same as when I stopped believing in Santa
>free will
When I was ~16, I "stopped believing". I think free will technically doesn't exist, but our brains will get us to do the thing we want most to do, so even if it did exist we would still act the same, if that makes any sense.
My belief in determinism seems to me to be kind of paradoxical, you were determined to believe you were determined to believe in determinism, it becomes an infinite regress
>>27143221
How is that an infinite regress? If determinism is true, you were determined to believe in determinism.
That's not logically problematic
>>27141005
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never believed
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Didn't believe, but I believed in ayylmaos till I was 12
>3. God(s) and deities
12 or 13
>4. Free will
still believe somehow
Fairies are real.
>>27143552
Quiero creerlo.
>>27141005
>Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never really believed in these. Guess playing Ghosts & Goblins and seeing them in media made me believe they were not real.
>Ghosts, vampires, and demons
>implying vampires aren't real
Same as the last
>God(s) and deities
Never really drank that type of cool aid. As a kid, I did not really understand the concept, just sort of didn't care about it. Didn't even really know one could "not believe in god", or that there was even a word for it.
>Free will
I have yet to think too hard about this one.
>>27142793
Compatibilists and hard incompatibilists basically believe things are the same way. Compatiblists just want to call what we have "free will" and hard incompatlibilists are like, "that's a dumb thing to call something that's either predetermined or up to quantum randomness. Doesn't seem all that "free".
>Fairies, goblins, and elves
>Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Never believed.
>God(s) and deities
Never truly believed but started questioning religion since about 3rd grade.
>Free will
9th grade I guess. Not really in an edgy way. I just think that it's possible that everything we're experiencing has already happened, and if that's true then free will only existed once.
>>27143691
Actually they don't believe the same thing, and the issue is more than mere semantics. Both theories have serious implications for moral responsibility, blame, forgiveness, the role of the legal system and even metaphysical considerations regarding agency, actions, and causation. If it was just a definitional debate it wouldn't have the importance it does in contemporary phil
>>27143774
>Actually they don't believe the same thing, and the issue is more than mere semantics.
They both believe we don't have libertarian free will and that our wills are either completely causal or partly acausal.
The compatiblist wants to call this free will and use it as an excuse to make people suffer for things they couldn't have helped but do, any more than a blind person could choose to see.
Compatibilists seem like they can't even understand the concept of wanting to want.
>>27141005
>>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never believed
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
See above
>3. God(s) and deities
Eh, I've varied through the years. I've come to believe that there is likely some sort of omnipotent, omnipresent force in the universe but I don't know if I'd call it God.
>4. Free will
Personally, I believe in free will.
>>27141005
I had a very religious upbringing.
1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never believed
2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
16
3. God(s) and deities
16
4. Free will
16
Believing in God(s) would be the worst of these, followed by believing in free will (unless it's the useless kind you define into existence, which still makes you kind of stupid).
>>27143801
What a ridiculous misrepresentation of the compatibilist argument.
> wants to call this free will and use it as an excuse to make people suffer for things they couldn't have helped but do, any more than a blind person could choose to see.
No one says this. The compatibilist says that rather than having alternate possibilities, what is needed for free will is some appropriate psychic structure under which we can say the agent is responsible. If the situation is like the blind man, this psychic structure won't be present.
>>27143728
>and if that's true then free will only existed once.
Nigga that doesn't even kinda follow. It would just mean that human beings are remarkably predictable creatures, which they are. Predictability does not necessitate a lack of free will.
>>27143885
what is needed for free will is some appropriate psychic structure under which we can say the agent is responsible.
see
>an excuse to make people suffer for things they couldn't have helped but do
>>27143929
Right, sorry, my mistake for thinking 4chan might host someone even remotely capable of having intelligent debate about something like this. Good luck with your sophomore year.
>>27143869
I think believing in free will is more ludicrous than belief in God, personally.
Some conception of a God or Godlike thing could be coherent. Libertarian free will is completely incoherent.
And I think compatibilism is incredibly mean-spirited, sophistic, dishonest, and potentially very destructive. It's probably the worst kind of "free will" belief.
>>27143964
He made a fine point. Compatibilists want to "hold people responsible".
Part of that generally includes hurting people and feeling righteous in doing so.
>>27144015
Right, but to claim that they couldn't have done otherwise as if that were evidence against compatibilism is to beg the question.
The whole point of compatibilism is that it doesn't think being able to do otherwise is a requirement for moral condemnation. So you can't point to that fact as a counter argument.
I honestly don't understand why people believe in a deterministic universe model. I've yet to be presented with any reasonable evidence that time exist outside of this very moment. Time in the context of the past and the present is purely a human invention, and at every point the future remains undetermined.
>>27144117
Even if presentism is true, that doesn't imply determinism is false. The future might not exist but that doesn't mean it isn't entirely predictable
>>27144053
>The whole point of compatibilism is that it doesn't think being able to do otherwise is a requirement for moral condemnation.
So in other words, compatibilism is batshit insane.
>1.
Never
>2.
I believe ghosts are a person's electric remnants. Vampire is ehh I mean sure people can crave blood but I don't believe in the storybook version. I have seen, heard, and felt demonic possession
>3.
Personally I believe the 6th dimension is where all God's sleep and they created 4th dimensional beings to explore space-time
>4.
It's all about perspective but I would argue anything involving free will, would eventually have the horseshoe effect
>>27144154
Have you thought about trying to be published? Ginet might be interested in working with you.
>>27141142
Wow.
Hi me.
>>27144154
I'll take this bait. The whole point of Frankfurt cases is to demonstrate this. Imagine A want to kill B, and does so. Now imagine that C watches this, and in another situation if A decides to not kill B, he will flip a switch that brainwashes A and causes A to kill B anyway.
So in the first situation (where the switch wasn't flipped), A still could not have done otherwise, but is intuitively still responsible.
Obviously you can debate this example but just restating the Principle of alternate possibilitues is not a good argument
>>27144139
On the contrary, we might be able to predict to a very high degree of certainty that an event is going to happen, and indeed the entire field of statistics relies upon the notion that we can, but never can we be absolutely certain. Even if the chance that the sun doesn't rise tomorrow is infinitesimally small, it still exist. It exist as the limit of (1/x) as x approaches infinity.
This is the case for all unknown quantities, and if the future does not exist, then it remains an unknown quantity.
>>27144324
I'm not sure I follow why if the future doesn't exist it's an unknowable quantity. I don't believe numbers exist (at least, they only exist in the same abstract way as the future does) but I'm certain 4x2 is 8
Don't get me wrong, I agree presentism meshes well with a libertarian account but I don't think it logically necessitates one
>>27143986
I don't know, you could hamfist free-will into things when you start talking about souls. It's slightly less retarded than some traditional concepts of God (still retarded though).
I do agree that you can conceive certain ideas of God (which most people wouldn't count as God) without being stupid about it. I also agree on compatibilism being what you described it. I think many people use it as an ugly crutch to validate their twisted judgement.
It doesn't stop at free will, people come up with stupid ideas of personal identity or even morality to justify some of the sick shit they think about.
>>27144419
Well, Kurt Godel logically proved that no formulation of arithmetic can be both complete and consistent, so one might easily argue that 4 * 2 does not equal 8. In fact, our modern conception of numbers is built almost entirely upon the empty set, one of the most divisive elements of mathematics. The argument could be made that 4 * 2 is a meaningless statement, and that the claim it equals 8 is equally without substance.
Regardless, it is not possible to predict precisely the results of random events. However, it is possible to predict the patterns inherent in any random event acted upon by outside influences. This is probability theory, which concerns itself solely with non-deterministic events or measured quantities.
I honestly connect conceive of any method by which a nonexistent future could be predetermined. Granted I'm a little drunk, but it would seem to me that nonexistence implies randomness. I would cite any sort of game of chance. A coin flip cannot be absolutely predicted no matter how much computational power is devoted to the task. One can make statements like "A coin will land on heads three times in a row 12.5% of the time", but they cannot mathematically determine that their next coin flip will be heads.
>>27144817
>connect conceive
just stop, please.
>>27141005
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
u wot m8
>3. God(s) and deities
Ostensibly, I became an atheist and stopped going to church around 16. In some sense, I stopped believing a while ago, and my explicit loss of faith was just a reaction to how I had been structuring my life and my priorities (i.e. in a secular godless manner) for many years at that point. In another sense, I never really lost the God complex. I still cry about how I'm a lost sheep wandering in darkness, still stubbornly unwilling to return to The Good Shepherd.
>4. Free will
Iunno, 13 or something? It seems pretty obvious to me that under a materialistic understanding of the world, there's no coherent basis for "free will" because that there's nothing which could possibly be the agent exercising that will; it's all just the shifting distribution of energy anyway
I mean "free will" is obviously a model of human behavior that produces actionable conclusions, and people have treated it as a useful model for generations (among other things it's kind of hard to talk as though agents don't exist). But it's not... it can't possibly be rock solid true the way religious truths are claimed as true.
>>27141005
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Never did.
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
Never did.
>3. God(s) and deities
Didn't care or feel the need because I grew up with excess.
>4. Free will
Never truly understood this and don't care because it didn't seem that relevant or practically useful to know that I didn't have free will.
>>27143774
>Both theories have serious implications for moral responsibility, blame, forgiveness, the role of the legal system and even metaphysical considerations regarding agency, actions, and causation.
what a load of bullshit
>If it was just a definitional debate it wouldn't have the importance it does in contemporary phil
If that's honestly true, no fucking wonder anyone with a brain disdains contemporary philosophy. It is LITERALLY just a definitional debate.
The other "serious implications" attached to it are UNIVERSALLY non sequiturs that have been associated with these definitions through centuries of fuzzy logic and imagery-based thinking. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER that the logical propositions advanced by compatibilists / noncompatibilists should necessarily lead to the conclusions on (blame, forgiveness, the legal system) that are associated with those positions. Those are all based on unspoken assumptions about the nature of morality and responsibility that are ALWAYS less defensible than the anodyne position on free will that they hide behind.
Either argue what you're going to argue, or don't. If you try to weasel people into accepting your conclusions through this kind of rhetorical jujitsu you're worthless as a thinker and can produce nothing of worth.
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
I never believed.
2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
I never truly 'believed' in it, but... you know how the brain can create the idea of something that is just as terrifying as the reality. I had a lot of night terrors.
3. God(s) and deities
I never really believed in this.
4. Free will
I'm still not sure what to think of this, demo desune
>>27141005
>1. Fairies, goblins, and elves
Why would I believe in these?
>2. Ghosts, vampires, and demons
They were just stories made up by the older kids in order to scare us.
>3. God(s) and deities
I've always wondered about God and the existence of other deities such as the Greek gods, and why God was so different in the OT. I guess I had always been sort of agnostic until I had to do my confirmation, which I avoided doing because I realized I didn't really believe in God.
>4. Free will
I still don't get this debate and why it would change the way a persons acts. I mean, sure if you're free you'll do whatever you want and if you're not you'll just do whatever you're compelled to do, but how can you even tell the difference?
>fairies, goblins and elves
never did i think
>ghosts, vampires, demons
nope, never did
>God(s) and other deities
I do believe there's a higher entity, im catholic but is mostly by tradition than anything else. No religion has an absolute truth about a God
>Free will
TL;DR I believe in free will
1. Never believed in them
2. Stopped at 18
3. Still going until now. My religion makes sense to me.
