That is an easy question to answer. We have an innate moral conscience (and an innate moral sense) because it enabled our ancestors to solve cooperation problems in ways that increased their reproductive fitness.

However, I have no reason to believe that knowing the function of our moral sense - to solve cooperation problems - can answer questions about moral ends and moral values independent of cooperation strategies. — Mark S

This sounds problematic as what else could set a moral end if not that, which makes moral decisions possible in first place? What happened? Did we just put the label "moral" on arbitrary habits?

That sounds merely like your preference.

We might also prefer that mind-independent moral theories be able to answer any ethical question. Again, there are no reasons I know of to believe that. — Mark S

The question that you should be asking then is "How is moral conscience even possible?"
Simple logic gives this: The ability to distinguish between right and wrong would imply a capability to do so.

No, I don’t see the problem. Maximizing durable happiness by maximizing satisfaction and minimizing suffering defines an end. It does not define a means. — Mark S

An "end" would be something of unquestionable value. Happiness is good and hence worthwhile. "Maximizing" it.... seems formal. This seems to give it priority over other goods. Minimizing suffering is not necessarily the same and can be made to conflict with it in thought experiments. How would we judge what to do? To me it seems there has to be another end behind those.

If we are going to effectively work toward achieving something, here a moral ‘end’, then we have to agree on what we are working to achieve – we have to define it. Sure, if you don’t care about achieving an end then you can leave it undefined. — Mark S

This sounds like the definition would be a means to achieve the end...
Sorry - you see the problem with this I hope.

I don't agree and Schopenhauer wrote a complete philosophy on the basis of the blind will. The way I see it, it is the ever coming into being. Like you might cut your lawn on a summer's day it doesn't give up because every Saturday you cut it down, it keeps coming into being. — boagie

May be, but I was not speculating about metaphysics.
The declaration of will of an individual must be assumed as free expression. It makes no sense otherwise: Any form of coercion nullifies it as such.
You may see it as the expression of accordance between the state of affairs expressed on the piece of paper and the biological determination of your organism. That doesn't matter at all.
However, if you say that your signature is expression of external forces acting upon you - like the force of gravity overcame the autonomy of the small mass of your biological system, dragging your hand around making figures on the paper - that would matter.
The line of distinction is exactly the self-perception of the individual; being able to make such a distinction - subjectively - implies a meaningful concept of freedom and will.

So to repeat

The whole idea is absurd. — boagie

I cannot agree with that - the discussion about it's meaning may be. It doesn't matter one way or the other...

When one states that there is free will, one needs to ask free will from what. The whole idea is absurd. — boagie

No. It is a synthetic judgement. If "will" is not (perceived) as free then it isn't "will" at all. This has a meaning in the subjective dimension. You ought to know if you want to post in this thread, if someone better came to your rescue or if you need some kind of therapy.

To be meaningful don't we have to define what is good as a state-of-affairs? — Mark S

Define? I don't think so. Mediate? May be. We could also point to examples what is bad and leave the conclusion open.

"The good" is that what can be wanted reasonably. Is that a state of affairs?

Moral ‘ends’ (goals) are a state of affairs, or perhaps an idea about a state of affairs as unenlightened suggests. — Mark S

From a deontic point of view the moral end is "the good" which deserves unconditional preference over "the bad" or "the evil". This is not a state of affairs but a value-in-itself which may appear to be represented by a state-of-affairs or some action. But as is always the case with mere appearances one can be oh so wrong about their true nature.

There is no count unless you know what you are counting. In response to the question "how many" is the question "how many what?" — Fooloso4

Numbers. But this doesn't seem to work if the existence of numbers would depend on the givenness of a count.

The question of free will then only applies when we come to that fork in the road. — invicta

The situation often is that, for example, given the choices A and B, B is chosen.
If you put up another choice C, so that there are A, B and C and the decision changes to C this is a _clear_ indicator that B was never really wanted. The whole "choice" abstraction is something that may apply to roads but already cancel or restrict freedom. "Having to decide" is a crystal-clear indicator that the choice is not free. The car standing on the road in front of the fork may be the last outpost of freedom a rational individual might have. "I want neither A or B. I'll just stay here". This is why most enforcement of decisions is usually done with clauses that say what will happen if no active decision is made. That way the exercise of power can disguise itself as free decision. It is clearly said that an active decision is not really needed. This is like the judge who lets you freely sign a piece of paper or go into jail until you do so. That is power of definition: If anyone else would do that to you it would be coercion. If the state does it, it is your free choice and you can be free in jail.
Such argumentation was seen by the German Ethics Council when discussing a vaccine mandate for Covid 19 - of course it was not "jail" there but the restriction on participation in public life.

It happens I have to do one thing out of two and I don't prefer or want any of the two to an extent I could just flip a coin to chose my destiny. But then I would feel unfree somehow...

You might look at it this way: there are some items we cannot see or touch in a dark room. How many items are there? Potentially there might be any number of things. — Fooloso4

Which is just half-as-bad as if I just start to count. What is it that I am counting there? From your description I would actualize some potential. I do not think this is the case:
The idea of "twoness" which makes two things countable as "two" is really just responsible for the existence of the things as 2-countable. It is what makes the things 2-countable. It is not their two-countability.

I am not arguing in favor of their concept of number, only trying to explain it. — Fooloso4

Whose concept would that be you are talking about?

Counting them actualizes the potential. — Fooloso4

As to me this sounds like a duplication of the idea.

There is a potential for "1" or "2" or any number of things only as long as you or someone else is able to count and there is something to be counted and those things are visible and each one distinguishable. Counting them actualizes the potential. — Fooloso4

To me this seems like an outright contradiction. You create a space of number potentials waiting to be turned into numbers. This is a bad speculation. Especially for the greeks who ran into the problem that their number-ratios could not express certain lengths appearing in real geometry. So there is a real length, or a real are but no number or ratio that can express those.

Are you denying that discrete objects can be counted? Or continuous quantities measured? I am not sure what you are objecting to. — Dfpolis

I see no difference between the claim that a number-potential is guaranteed to exist and the claim that a number is guaranteed to exist. Where are those potentials? Do they exist? Are they potential potentials or actual potentials? I think you are just giving the numbers a fancy name.
There is a 1 potential which must always have existed actually as I can count to 1.
There is a 2 potential which must always have existed actually as I can count to 2.
....

Do they exist for every mind? Do they exist independently of mind? Does your mind make such potentials exist for my mind?

Far from a simple pursuit of the truth for the sake of truth, philosophy is politics by other means. — Fooloso4

Could it be true? The most impactful philosophers in modern history had either to flee their countries or decided to leave for good. Is the paycheck a sure indicator of agency?

... in being aware of a physically determined role, because such awareness is impotent.

Which does not allow for any conclusion whatsoever.
— Heiko
On the contrary, it shows exactly what I said above: that consciousness, whatever its origin, cannot be selected unless it can do something that allows it to be selected. — Dfpolis

But why would it _need_ to be selected to be present? This is why the follow-up is not a straw-man in your case.

If you want to argue that it "could be an accident," you need to define "accident" and explain how an intentional effect can instantiate that definition when physics (the presumed source of the "accident") has no intentional effects. — Dfpolis

Say evolution wants fire for the warmth but not the smoke but yet has to live with it. Things can be perceived in different ways because they have different effects.
You can imagine how an animal or another human would feel because the experience is linked to the body. You can even imagine to be someone else but yet cannot imagine to be your own self?

Sadly, we know that it is not "a necessary side-result of 'biological computational.'" If it were, we would necessarily be conscious of all biological computation, and, as I showed in my article, we are not. — Dfpolis

I don't see the necessity. My computer and the software it is running has no reflection on all the transistors that change state, yet those generate output on the screen which is the effect of those state-changes.

For what purpose would you need to argue with evolution theory in first place?

We are left to conclude that actual numbers result from counting and measuring operations. — Dfpolis

Which is where you should stop - here the speculation over "potential existing numbers" is completely absent. That is what sends you right to the platonic number space.

Further, as a rule, when an agent actualizes a potential, — Dfpolis

Right here. What get's realized? Where are those potentials? Are they really there / do they exist? Are you sure about them?

Logical scrutiny is of no avail if you have already abandoned logic. — Dfpolis

Logical calculus has made serious progress over time. We can choose axioms as needed.

Don't you find abandoning logic irrational? There is no need to ditch excluded middle if we recognize that numbers are concepts and their "existence" is normally potential rather than actual. — Dfpolis

But you are contradiction yourself. Try to tell me what it _is_(contradiction number one) that is "potentially available" (we can predicate those potentialities that cannot exist as they would then be actual countable things) but not "actually there". What are you even talking about? That makes absolutely _no_ sense: You are doing for your potentials what you deny for the numbers. In your view the potentials are readily "at-hand" when needed to become numbers but - for some not understandable reason - not the numbers themselves.

Yet what does he mean here by "abstract from"?? — KantDane21

Taking a position to argue from pure reason, the transcendental ego or the res cogitans, I'd say.
He says that the choice made is the choice for the concrete character then and there, not a principle choice or the maxime of the will, but only an appearance thereof.
Kant had the argument that free will can only focus values-in-themselves as only those are values who deserve to be wanted for their own sake, regardless of empirical circumstances.

I see those nilly-willy argumentations all over the place

There is no adaptive advantage ...

This is not how evolution works. We can say that advantageous properties have a tendency to reproduce and hence become more common, but this does not mean that all surviving properties are advantageous.

... in being aware of a physically determined role, because such awareness is impotent.

Which does not allow for any conclusion whatsoever. The whole consciousness-thingy could be an accident and not a supreme telos. In fact, if conscious thought was a necessary side-result of "biological computational" activity leading to some behaviour the empiric observation would exactly be what it is.

In my eyes this is two logical unsound conclusions in just one sentence - which I can not really explain happening. Maybe this is where the telos, the final cause is? But what have I done to you?

If no one is thinking them, they remain possible thoughts, but not actual thoughts -- and if they are number concepts, they are possible numbers, but not actual numbers. — Dfpolis

I get the metaphorical idea but think it is not logically sound (at least, as presented).
What I understand of the philosophy of mathematics is, that as the idea of a non-existing number is self-contradictory, we have to ditch the law-of-excluded-middle (tertium non datur), to avoid having to conclude that all numbers exist.
Then one can argue, that having shown non-existing numbers are self-contradictory does not mean existence of all numbers is (positively) given. I am not aware that Aristotle did take that route; this is done by constructivist mathematics. I am no too familiar with their philosophical argumentation but can say they surely follow their ideas with logical scrutiny.

That is the problem with older writings: Maybe they give insights into "more initial", "more naive" concepts but the handiwork is not up to par with modern standards. Why would Aristotle's work contain better, more precise insights than the works of the generations following him who could start where he stopped? It would sound pretty reactionary to assume that things got worse over time.

You know the difference between thinking of 7, as when you are thinking of the seven dwarfs or the seven days of the week, and not thinking of 7. That is what I mean by thinking of the number 7. Similarly, for all the other numbers. — Dfpolis

The existence of a number does not depend on our being able to imagine the corresponding number of objects. It depends on actively thinking the concept and knowing what the concept intends -- knowing how to recognize an instance were we to encounter one. "How" is by counting to 10^1000. Knowing this does not require actually counting to 10^1000. — Dfpolis

I simply do not understand. There are so many stars in the sky, so many corns of sand on the beach....
Mind you, when you have 7 things, you have 6,5,... as well.

Numbers are actual only while being thought, because they are abstractions and so instruments of thought. — Dfpolis

Sorry, I still do no understand what you mean by thinking a number. We have explored a few different directions and approaches already. I am afraid I simply will not get it. I'll stay with a formal argument:
The set of non-existing numbers has to be empty per definition. They are a contradiction in themselves.

We are able to do what you said for every number that can be written and we know that we can do it. How then are there numbers that do not exist?

PS: The last question itself looks like a contradiction...

If we are considering a string of digits, it would be the count represented by that string, even though we cannot imagine exactly that many objects. — Dfpolis

I'm confused. Does the number 10^1000 exist or not? It is written there, but you won't find or be able to think that many things. "Thinking the count" just shift the question one level higher.

Heidegger is an important figure in helping to shape our current understanding of Aristotle. He taught a generation of students how to do a close reading of an ancient text, paying careful attention to the original language rather than relying on Latin translations. — Fooloso4

Well, not being able to judge the quality of such translations I am limited to saying I find his remarks interesting. Let me summarize and elaborate a little as I have taken some freedom of interpretation and application my self:

That, what makes a given thing the thing it is, is "caused" by 4 different moments. In Heidegger's words the thing owes itself to these four moments.
causa materialis - The material of which the thing is made or that makes up for it's body
causa formalis - The form or shape into which the the material was brought
causa finalis - The purpose of the thing - or - in a wider interpretation the relation of the thing to it's context
causa efficiens - which explicates or forges the thing as the thing it is. To me it seems possible to interpret this as calling a given thing names, taking into account or evaluating the other three causes. Yet Plato would object this as the thing "owes it's existence" to the causa efficiens.

And that is the point: mathematical "existence" is not actual existence, but a convenient shorthand for a certain kind of potential. — Dfpolis

Which - in history - got apparent especially when a concretized potential invalidated the whole underlying concept.
Yet one could say that the mode of existence of x+1 changes, when x is determined.
For x=3432331, we get an x+1 for sure. I am just to lazy to write it down. It is completely predicted.
AND: I just hammered on the keyboard for x. It is just a stream of digits forming a number already too large to grasp. What would be meant by thinking a number?

If we are still talking about Aristotle then there is no natural number "X". An number is always a number of something, a number of what it is that is being counted. The shift to symbolic notation occurs later. — Fooloso4

I am sorry, I got carried away by the course of arguments. I haven't studied Plato or Aristotle in original, but I find the explanation of causes and causality in Heidegger's Essay "The Question Concerning Technology" quite informative.

What we call cause and the Romans call causa is called aition by the Greeks, that to which something else is indebted. The four causes are the ways, all belonging at once to each other, of being responsible for something else.

The cause formalis is just one contribution to the "thing".

The problem is confusing this kind of "existence," which has no ability to do anything, with metaphysical existence, which invariably can do something -- even if it can only make itself known. What does nothing is indistinguishable from nothing, and so is nothing. — Dfpolis

Sorry, I have to counter this with an out-of-context Hegel quote

Nothing, however, is only, in fact, the true result, when taken as the nothing of what it comes from; it is thus itself a determinate nothing, and has a content.

I take this to say: in the moment you actually choose a number X for a "natural number" (as per definition) we have a "determinate nothing" X+1 as we know the rules to construct it. So it seems the "problem" is actually choosing a "natural number X" - and not X+1 which is already implied by the choice.

So if we'd define a concept of "concept" which allowed for deduction or implication of another concept - like e.g. we said "every concept has an opposite", then someone asked for a concept fitting out definition of "concept" has already - though indirectly - determined the real opposite when answering.

A problem seems only to exist when answering bleem for the number X...

Concepts are beings of reason, existing only when actually thought — Dfpolis

When I say "For every natural number X there exists a number X+1", does such a number exist for every natural number of your choice? It is widely accepted that, it does of course, because it must exist per definition of the natural numbers itself.

PS: Excuse this argument. Formality is the death of philosophy.

This is not "designation," but ideogenesis, because the instance comes before the concept. — Dfpolis

It does not seem to make sense to argue about this. One can make the argument that there is something like a space of all possible concepts. Like the rules of mathematical syntax. It is already defined which concepts can be formed and which cannot. The mathematician writes some set or class symbol and just "has" all possible "individuals" - except for cases where this does not make sense (like computational decision systems maybe). After identifying such different assumptions the abstraction was put further and mathematicians now deal with "programs" that - for example - can either decide to take the continuum hypothesis for granted or not. There is always a bigger fish.

This makes no sense to me "Truly free will creates it's only choice by it's decision". Choice is the cause, decision the effect. Are you saying that the decision determines the choice, as if the effect determines the cause.

Also, why would free will not be concerned with worldly affairs? You appear to put these things backward. The "need to decide" can only be a property of the capacity to decide. And as I said, I'd far prefer to have the capacity to decide, and the consequent "need to decide" because the world is forcing itself on me, then to be as a rock, where I would have no capacity to resist or manipulate what the world is forcing on me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Having to choose from given alternatives means you did not decide to choose, nor did you decide which alternatives there are to pick from. Where is freedom in that?
Free Will has no external cause and hence _cannot_ even target a worldly thing or be forced to decide. It either has a given focus(content) or it is not there at all.

Must be quite an A**hole to create humans that way just to make them suffer.
— Heiko

Actually I disagree. Suffering is caused by the same condition which allows for free will, the condition which produces the need to decide. I'd much rather have free will along with the associated suffering, than to live without feeling, like a stone. — Metaphysician Undercover

Cannot see that - truly free will is not concerned with worldly affairs or affect. The formulation of a "need to decide" already makes clear that the world is forcing itself upon you. Truly free will creates it's only choice by it's decision and does not pick from given alternatives like a hunted animal that can either flee left or right.

The perfect Being, God, does not do anything by chance, and the appearance that He does is only our own ignorance influencing how we apprehend things. And the materialist perspective, which denies the reality of the prior immaterial cause, insisting that anything real must perceptible to the senses, only reinforces this ignorance. — Metaphysician Undercover

Must be quite an A**hole to create humans that way just to make them suffer. In that way Descartes seemed to have a valid concern: It leads to way less contradictions to assume a demon pleased by human suffering instead. It would make perfect sense to trick humans into believing he was a good entity just for the laugh and "devotion" to the endless suffering and cruelty executed day by day.
If the misery brought onto humans was only bad luck and ignorance there could be hope. If it's
metaphysical it has to be ignorant or malignant in first place and we are doomed.

We can observe that other creatures are conscious and presume that they too have minds, but the mind is never a direct object of perception. — Wayfarer

I tend to question what could be meant with that. We say a reflection on thought is one of our selves but do not overcome the distinction of the observing and the observed. The "observed" thought - the words in "mind" - is "there", in "space". Absolute Idealism hinted that this perception is already adequate. There is no arbitrary determination of things done "by the mind". The things themselves have already imposed their negativity, ie their restrictions on what they can be, on the subject which is a part of totality:
A try of reduction leads to the thought of two "me": It is the pure observance of "I am"-me that has the quality of "I think"-me. We tend to think the subject as the active - which it is (in common sense) only as long as it misunderstands itself as it's object. A camera being moved has the impression to move; the pure observance of "a tripod wanting to walk" bears the impression of a want to walk. How fitting!

This seems like a good opportunity to take my chips and leave the table.
Good luck to everone and congratulations to the winner in advance.

Wittgenstein says the meaning of something like 357x68 is the foundation of a language game, just as the statement ‘this is my hand’ is the foundation of a language game wherein it doesn’t occur to us to doubt the truth of the statement. One could then ask, how long does it take this thing to be my hand? The type of certainty that we accord the solution to the equation is what he calls a form of life. So the ‘time’ of the equation or ‘this being my hand’ is the time of its contextual use in a language game. It has no existence outside of the occasion of its use as a particular sense. — Joshs

Aren't you doing now what you accused logics of, namely sacrificing meaning and sense to form? Now we are doing "language games" - Chips are dealt, we'll throw a few forms around and see what being and time are. Yey!
But wait - a game is something with changes of states of affairs so maybe they are time after all. Damn...

I do not really see the point of this discussion. Positive statements have to follow some rules to not be just wrong. And being able to refer to an ideal object more than once surely is more of an "enabler" of discussions.
The whole argumentation that the things were really always different and so on overlooks the very topic of the discussion: It is still the same thing nonetheless. If things can be identified and referred - and this is in fact the usual habit - this seems to lie in the nature of being. In fact it seems to be the primary way of recognition. Given: there are moments when this is not the case but in my view it requires some thinking about what is there to even arrive at the point where things "logically have to" be constructed from raw sensual input.

Mathematics is a human activity. Humans do indeed exist “in” time (or, better, “as” time). — Xtrix

So the second sentence supposes an identity that is not there? That's the wonder of logics. They are not dialectical in nature.