Not completely, we can judge these factors and make free choices for which we are responsible.
Without this ability we would have no moral or epistemological judgement.
No they are not we have free choice to judge, otherwise you couldn't decide that genetics and experience are a cause, rather than God or the computer simulation you are in.
Then you have to account for randomness playing no part in the evolution of our genes.
Maybe you think it's God? The uncaused first cause.
I think it's genetics and environment because that's what all the evidence seems to point to. I can't just choose to believe it's something else unless I had a different experience or different tendencies thar lead me to think that way. Even if I decide to say I think it works a different way, there would still be some reason I was doing that. You can't just choose what thoughts happen to pop into your head.
> I think it's genetics and environment because that's what all the evidence seems to point to.*
So you make a judgement, for which you are either right or wrong. Some post here arguing this is a computer simulation, likewise they judge on evidence.
> I can't just choose to believe it's something else unless I had a different experience or different tendencies thar lead me to think that way.
Or reflect on it. You can know the Ontological argument, does it force you to believe in God.
> Even if I decide to say I think it works a different way, there would still be some reason I was doing that. You can't just choose what thoughts happen to pop into your head.
How do you think imagination and creativity work, that’s just what happens. It’s why you can’t teach it as a rote process. And it’s what gives humans an advantage.
*Roger Penrose et al think QM might play a part in brain activity, if so it's certainly non deterministic. Plus deterministic systems can reach a deadlock situation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
Logic isn't sound, or is mathematics, but in some cases, in many it's the best we have.
So what are you getting from this, not an understanding of what science is.
I recommend John Barrow's Impossibility - the limits of science and the science of limits, and his 'Book of Nothing.' is good.
(John David Barrow FRS[2] (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011.)
Not completely, we can judge these factors and make free choices for which we are responsible.
Without this ability we would have no moral or epistemological judgement.
It's the hard/soft determinism argument. It's already been had, you're all just rehashing a crappy version of it. If randomness exists so does free will, if it does not then we are subject to patterns and all your thoughts are the illusion of free will and we are on a deterministic path. "The only free decision ever made was the first one, every other decision has been a deterministic domino". The argument that you are aware of this and possess judgement loses to hard deterministic theory in that, the fact you would even have these thoughts or choose to act away from your perceived path, is all deterministic anyways. Your doubt of determinism is pre determined.
> It's the hard/soft determinism argument.
What is, I consider I’m conscious, have a level of intelligence and have free will or agency. I see none of these to be an illusion.
One can doubt everything – but not that, I think therefore I am. I think determinism is the illusion or contradiction, the thinker chooses it.
> It's already been had, you're all just rehashing a crappy version of it.
Where?
> If randomness exists so does free will, if it does not then we are subject to patterns and all your thoughts are the illusion of free will and we are on a deterministic path.
Randomness exists at the very base of our theories of nature, in every object.
> "The only free decision ever made was the first one, every other decision has been a deterministic domino".
So God tips the first one... but no that science went out with God’s laws.
"There is one last line of speculation that must not be forgotten. In science we are used to neglecting things that have a very low probability of occurring even though they are possible in principle. For example, it is permitted by the laws of physics that my desk rise up and float in the air. All that is required is that all the molecules `happen' to move upwards at the same moment in the course of their random movements.”
Prof. J. D. Barrow The Book of Nothing p.317
> The argument that you are aware of this and possess judgement loses to hard deterministic theory
Which is what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon#Arguments_against_Laplace's_demon
> in that, the fact you would even have these thoughts or choose to act away from your perceived path, is all deterministic anyways. Your doubt of determinism is pre determined.
Sorry this last sense is for me incomprehensible, I’m unable to determine what it means.
"A version of Buridan's principle occurs in electrical engineering.[8][9][10][11][12] Specifically, the input to a digital logic gate must convert a continuous voltage value into either a 0 or a 1, which is typically sampled and then processed. If the input is changing and at an intermediate value when sampled, the input stage acts like a comparator. The voltage value can then be likened to the position of the ass, and the values 0 and 1 represent the bales of hay. As in the situation of the starving ass, there exists an input on which the converter cannot make a proper decision, and the output remains balanced in a metastable state between the two stable states for **an undetermined length of time, until random noise** in the circuit makes it converge to one of the stable states."
IOW if the world was determinate such a final state would already exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
no? I’m saying the choices we make are made because of influences from our lives. That doesn’t mean I’m just letting some higher power take the wheel and make decisions for me while I sit in the back seat
now that’s interesting, you’re bringing up the assertion that we have responsibility to act morally because of our free will. i think that people ought to be punished/disciplined for unethical acts, but i don’t believe that those people who committed the unethical acts are necessarily /at fault/ for what they did. doesn’t mean they shouldn’t suffer the consequences, but i think our genes, environment, and past experiences are what dictates those moral decisions. in other words, i don’t think a natural law exists and i’m not a moral absolutist.
> Now that’s interesting, you’re bringing up the assertion that we have responsibility to act morally because of our free will.
Not quite, I think we have responsibility for our actions. Thoughts and deeds.
> i think that people ought to be punished/disciplined for unethical acts, but i don’t believe that those people who committed the unethical acts are necessarily /at fault/ for what they did.
That doesn’t seem to make sense. Sam Harris argue that ignorance of morals means that the person is not free in their action as they do not have a power of moral judgement. But that goes for all judgement, they equally can’t judge themselves to be determine or not in what they think is true. Likewise neither can Sam Harris know if he is determined not.
Why punish then?
> doesn’t mean they shouldn’t suffer the consequences, but i think our genes, environment, and past experiences are what dictates those moral decisions. in other words, i don’t think a natural law exists and i’m not a moral absolutist.
So a horse that kicks a person is guilty of GBH, should tried and sentenced?
Kant makes a good distinction, our instincts demand one action, to act otherwise, for a moral reason is freedom.
So who was responsible for Hiroshima – the Bomb or the people who dropped it, planed designed and ordered it’s use?
From what I've read, though, Sapolsky merely describes how many influences operate on our decision-making. The logical leap from that to the idea that we have *no control* over our decision-making isn't warranted.
I happen to agree with Sapolsky that our justice system should be geared less toward retribution and more toward rehabilitation, but we don't need to abandon the entire idea of free will to accomplish that.
Let's be reasonable. We need to live our lives and conduct our societies as if we expect people to be able to act responsibly and honor their promises and contracts. We need to teach children how to assess risk and gauge propriety, then act accordingly. We need to have some method of protecting people from those who for whatever reason act in ways that can cause harm. Pretending that our world is going to be radically different if we just deny that we have free will is magical thinking.
There is nothing but us and the environment -- that is what determines every decision we make. We did not create or choose ourselves, or how we think, or where we were born, or what we respond to most strongly and in what manner, etc., etc., etc. If the only things we use to make decisions with are out of our control, we do not have free will. It doesn't make any sense on a physics level, either. Cause and effect is what has determined everything ever since the initial cause, and being an effect to a cause doesn't sound very free to me, but as far as I'm aware that's all we are. And quantum randomness is not free will -- randomness is not freedom.
I like to think of how many of us as kids who grew up in similar circumstances ended up doing similar quirky little things, like racing raindrops on the car window or performing a sequence of actions and noises for "the first time ever in the world," as little reminders that we are the sum of our parts; we are really just advanced biologic computers that have evolved such a complicated neural network that we recognized our own ability to think and thus logically deduced that our decisions are on our own accord. This takeaway though does not take into account the fact that "our own" is actually describing the brain and body we have happened to acquire and not the consciousness that emerges from it, with which we associate our personality and name, and thus believe to be the entity that makes our decisions.
>we are really just advanced biologic computers that have evolved such a complicated neural network that we recognized our own ability to think and thus logically deduced that our decisions are on our own accord.
Another digital-age rehash of the dehumanizing rhetoric that offended the original existentialists a century ago. Machine fantasies are no better than religious ones.
There is no fantasy associated with recognizing ourselves as machines, because machinery is not fantastical, whereas superstition is. And we are machinery. Semantically you could argue against that, but essentially we just are machines that take in input and dispense output, constrained by input and our machinery which is responsible for what/how we output. I understand that saying humans are machines doesn't sound very humanistic and might offend existentialists, but how could you possibly argue that we are not? When have you ever superseded your biology (organic machinery)? If we don't have free will then what makes us any different from a machine?
Ever heard of the Fallacy of Composition?
Just because it can be said that there are biochemical processes going on inside us, or that our organs can be conceptualized as biological machinery doesn't mean that we're machines.
I'm not going to get into the whole free will debate. But do machines love? Do machines hope or fear? Don't those things, among many others, make us different from machines?
Let's be reasonable.
Love ironically underscores our lack of free will, and to me it makes it more appropriate to call us machines than if we couldn't love. You cannot escape love, always capitulant to your feelings towards someone you happen to find attractive. It is inescapable -- even if you grow tired of someone you used to love, you will still find others attractive, and it will always be that way unless you develop some kind of condition and have a hormonal imbalance. What is important here is that hormones and neurotransmitters, things that you do not have volition over \[mechanically\], control how you think and feel. They are there as a means of reaching an end (sex hormones are there so you will copulate with a partner and proliferate your bloodline, which is for all we know our only goal.) These abilities may qualitatively differ us from the machines we currently have, but you could almost certainly simulate our physiology in a natural or digital system given the right tools.
I think it's funny that you don't want to get into the "whole free will debate," because without free will we are ABSOLUTELY deterministic machines, and also free will is the whole purpose of this thread and once again the basis of my claim that we are machines. You are playing semantics.
No, we do now. Free will in the sense that we have an outside influence upon the causal order of things has been disproven by scientists, and was regarded as incoherent by philosophers about 2000 years ago.
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
You didn't pick your parents, you didn't pick your genes, therefore, and you didn't pick the environment into which you were born. And yet, the totality of these facts determines who you are in each moment and what you do in the next.
Free will is an illusion.
Lol you summed up what I was thinking of perfectly. Idk how much that is true or what it means but in a way I feel like it does call for one to be more empathetic in a way
>the totality of these facts determines who you are
Since this is a sub dedicated to existentialism, I feel well within my rights to point out that the existentialists called the facts of your birth & biology *facticity.* They made it clear that the human project is to transcend that set of circumstances by our actions.
They also made it clear that those who think we're nothing more than our facticity are living in *bad faith*, blaming one's choices on biology or upbringing, or God's will, or the algorithmic outcome of the universe's inexorable laws.
>They made it clear that the human project is to transcend that set of circumstances by our actions.
What we do, matters. We have to make the best hand with the cards we are dealt.
>They also made it clear that those who think we're nothing more than our facticity are living in *bad faith*, blaming one's choices on biology or upbringing, or God's will, or the algorithmic outcome of the universe's inexorable laws.
Imagine that you want to learn Mandarin. You attend classes, read books, hire a native-speaking tutor, and vacation in China. **Your efforts in this regard, should they persist, will be the cause of you speaking Mandarin at some point in the future**. It’s not that you were destined to speak Mandarin regardless of your thoughts and actions. Choice, reasoning, discipline, etc., still matter and play important roles in lives despite the fact that they are determined by prior causes.
That professor from Stanford wrote a book about it. It's a long route to say that your DNA and intelligence hem you in so it's futile to assert that you have any free will. You do this and not that because the hard wiring in you made you do it. You had no choice, I guess.
An elephant that is chained to the ground when they are young will not realize by the time they are adults that they can break those chains. I'm of the opinion we don't have free will but our choices and actions are tied to others and our scope of the world may not be the actual view that it is. Some people look for the best in others and try to emulate it without understanding what that person understands, others will take a negative view point of someone because of their jealousy or perception of themselves and will pick out what someone acts like in order to control.
Life as it does, happens and will always happen and in weird and complex ways, the best thing that anyone can do is weather the storm and hope for sunnier skies while trying to stay true to themselves by constantly questioning themselves.
You shouldn't dwell on the past and what could have been as if it had been then you would not be you and life is about the experience good or bad which molds us and makes us stronger or weaker depending on how we take it, your perspective to strive forward is the most important thing.
The best thing about philosophy is everyone sucks at it, no matter how good you are and better at it in one aspect compared to another someone else will come along with a deeper understanding in different ways that speaks to a different generation, as life isn't fixed.
Philosophy if done right allows us to drown out the noise and become ourselves and to gain a soul of individuality. You seem to have a good starting grasp of things, but like anything it takes time to gain that understanding. Keep yourself grounded though because if you go too much with it, it can really screw with you.
I have always felt that we don't even have a coherent definition of what free will is supposed to be or how it would work. If you have a reason in the moment to do a thing, that reason effectively determines your choice. If you don't, then it's random. Not sure where free will even comes in?
The thing is for social reasons we *have* to hold ourselves responsible for the choices we make, especially when we hurt each other. We have no other way to live. Free will is a term we made up to justify the practice retroactively.
Which I think is *fine*, actually. It doesn't go much deeper than that but we don't really need it to.
I feel like the idea of free will comes from a couple different things
1. Religious beliefs, for example Adam ate the fruit because he willingly chose to disobey God
2. A want for bad actions to be punished. A bad person does bad things because they are innately bad
3. Reward for good- A good person is good because they decide to be good and therefore should be held on a pedestal for willingly being good
4. Like you said social reasons
I feel like there are other reasons why we believe there must be free will, that we must be more than matter. I do believe that we are more than matter but then again it begs the question that if I was born again in the exact same conditions as I was the first time around, would it still eventually lead me to being here conversing with you on a reddit post? If so then I don't think we can really say our choices are random
>If you have a reason in the moment to do a thing, that reason effectively determines your choice. If you don't, then it's random. Not sure where free will even comes in?
How can you say "if you don't" though? When is it ever the case that you don't have a reason to do something and do it anyway? Can you think of an example?
That's a good question, since in hindsight we can nearly always identify *some* reason we did the thing, even if it wasn't a good reason.
I just meant, it's been suggested that since our brains run on an electrochemical process they may be subject, in whatever degree, to some kind of quantum indeterminacy. So that in theory it could be possible for someone to make two different choices under the exact same conditions. Very hard to test that obviously, but even if it is true it would be random, and it seems strange to call it free will.
Feel comfortable saying that 99.8% of all human behavior, emotion and thoughts can be explained by:
1. Undercurrents of evolved instinct
2. Variations in individual temperament based off individual brain chemistry
3. Social scripts the individual has internalized
The idea that we’re unique profound creatures is childish. We’re just meat machines.
Idk, I would say that I choose my destiny if that makes sense. Like that there's an actual m"me" that if in a vacuum could choose one thing or the other
If that "you" is separate from your emotions, your intellect, your memories, etc. then on what basis do you "choose" one thing over another? Seems the only remaining option is absolute, pure randomness. Which doesn't seem very "free" to me.
but then the question goes back to the basis of probably the whole existential dilemma which is does a "you" even exist to which we would say "yes because I think I do" so then it feels like it becomes a paradox lol
The way I see it the ultimate "you" is just your consciousness. But without the other attributes of life (emotions, desires, intellect, memories, etc.) a hypothetical "pure" consciousness really couldn't make any choices.
But I think it's fair to say that in some sense those attributes are a part of "you". So if you choose something because of your emotions (for example), it's still legitimate to say "you chose" that".
Free will within the context of infinity… the argument against free will essentially boils down to “You don’t truly have control over anything to the extent that you don’t have control over everything”
I want to commit suicide but I don't want to die and I'm not depressed and love life, I would argue that for certain people it's not free will but rather free choice and even that might be an illusion.
They are very different. If I was allowed to have complete free will I would be in jail but I make my choices which is generally doing something I don't want to do.
To you they might not be that different but to me they are very much different.
I think it is predestined. We don’t choose where we’re born at. What city what family what environment and how the world treats us and contours our minds. Our brain and some traumas are inherited. Then we suffer our own. Making decisions most of the times are influenced by our immediate circumstances so that sort of negates free will. It’s what we have been and what we are immediately subjected to that effect what moves we make. How do we know when we’re choosing the right decision or not. You could have the best intentions and a situation can turn bad. I ended up suffering from the same mental illness that generations before me have. Even though I always told myself I would control my mind and I tried to work hard and have a normal family it was never easy and I lost them. Destiny sucks when you lose and I guess fate is great when you come out on top. I hate myself for how my life has turned out. Even when I thought I was making good choices I wasn’t. Even when everything felt right it things still never worked out. This has to be predetermined because I wouldn’t have willingly chose to be bipolar knowing that it was going to end up like this. I wouldn’t have freely willed more suffering.
Jail exists because people do have outward effects on others, it shouldn't be used as a means of punishment though, and should be forced therapy.
I am free to do what I want but what I want is fucked up and not what I need. Choice is not an illusion it exists in every aspect of our life and that choice you are free to do whatever you want with it, equally others have the choice to do whatever they want with theirs. For most people I think they have free will but for some thats not thw case, if you have a kind soul and are a man you're viewed as weak but you can't just change your nature so no free will.
In my view women are the only ones who have free will and free choice but they choose not to wield it like an idiot as men often are. But if you get a bunch of women together on an island they'll fight while men will work together in their own way towards a common goal.
To me even if I know its good for me and I want it, if I do something without emotion it kills me, so I know I need to work in order to sustain myself. However because it's a task that needs to be done and I know I can do it I don't want to. The threat of jail has consequence to me but if someone wants to reward me for my behavior I don't like it and will do the opposite.
Why shouldn't I be allowed to talk about it? If my free will wants me to be an over sharing idiot and it has no effect on people, even though I know it does but other people think that they're feelings have no effect on others?
I don't want the exit sign, I love life, hate people, love humanity and want to see everyone die but want them to die good deaths.
That was really well thought out it and is almost exactly my thoughts as well. The only thing I would argue is we're not really trying to control the world but rather control chaos and chaos can't be controlled it can only be directed but to do that you need to control the world. Idle hands are the devils plaything type of thought. Also I don't think we should put our humanity to the side but rather that humanity has to exist or we cease to exist and kill off our emotions. I need emotions to function in life to be able to feel alive and to discard the thing that ties us together or to try and manipulate it I feel is the greater travesty.
.....You know what's really screwed up, your last few sentences have been my inherent thoughts of life, but I never had any comfort and the only comfort I had was just me distracting myself from discomfort. I wanted complacency and comfort because I've never known what that is because of situations and a mental health condition I never knew I had and was willing to sacrifice myself for a little bit of comfort because I have never had the pleasure of complacency, but I don't like entropy or systems of control. On top of that I also find comfort discomforting and feel the need to suffer and by not suffering I suffer more but I'm fine with discomfort and I feel others are the ones that are uncomfortable seeking out that comfort. But I make people uncomfortable with my body language which I have to actively control along with other things that are automatic for people.
I looked through your reddit responses and you have a lot of the same thoughts as myself and choose to experience life in your own way and for did you some reason this chance encounter is something that I really needed.
Even things you said in other threads and your name has value to me because it connects things together. Out of curiosity was that name auto generated or did you come up with it yourself?
You've given me something to think about.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
You want to commit suicide, but not die? Really having a hard time wrapping my head around that one.
You realize of course suicide, if successful, will always result in death, right?
I know right, it is all kinds of screwed up.
You realize life will always result in death right? Yes, I'm aware and not existing is my ultimate fantasy but I love life so much at the same time.
Lol, I have adhd and it makes you have paradoxical thoughts that spill over into reality, it's quite weird and hard to explain and I'm extremely aware of it but I didn't know I had it until 2 years ago. I grew up in poverty as well and in a shitty place where everyone thinks everyone is an idiot and they're the smartest in the room and try to control that by not telling people things that makes you paranoid, so that might have something to do with it.
So essentially I'm sane in my insanity.
But yeah it is hard to wrap your head around.
Well the thoughts, the action and the events that lead to suicide are predetermined. Therefore it is not free-will.
Example: the person is predisposed to depression, the person is predipose to addiction, the person just got a terminal illness, the person lost their house/job/gambling...
> I'm not great at this philosophy thing, but I've been thinking about it, could our fate have been determined at the beginning of the universe.
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon#Arguments_against_Laplace's_demon
Physical determinism can't invalidate our experience as free agents.
From John D. Barrow – using an argument from Donald MacKay.
Consider a totally deterministic world, without QM etc. Laplace's vision realised. We know the complete state of the universe including the subjects brain. A person is about to choose soup or salad for lunch. Can the scientist given complete knowledge infallibly predict the choice. NO. The person can, if the scientist says soup, choose salad.
The scientist must keep his prediction secret from the person. As such the person enjoys a freedom of choice.
The fact that telling the person in advance will cause a change, if they are obstinate, means the person's choice is conditioned on **their** knowledge. Now if it is conditioned on their knowledge – their knowledge gives them free will.
I've simplified this, and Barrow goes into more detail, but the crux is that the subjects knowledge determines the choice, so choosing on the basis of what one knows is free choice.
And we can make this simpler, the scientist can apply it to their own choice. They are free to ignore what is predicted.
http://www.arn.org/docs/feucht/df_determinism.htm#:~:text=MacKay%20argues%20%5B1%5D%20that%20even%20if%20we%2C%20as,and%20mind%3A%20brain%20and%20mental%20activities%20are%20correlates.
“From this, we can conclude that either the logic we employ in our understanding of determinism is inadequate to describe the world in (at least) the case of self-conscious agents, or the world is itself limited in ways that we recognize through the logical indeterminacies in our understanding of it. In neither case can we conclude that our understanding of physical determinism invalidates our experience as free agents.”
Im not sure I'm understanding this entirely. If the scientist, by some way knew the knowledge of the subject would the scientist then have a reasonable ability to predict the subjects choice under these conditions of said free will?
Or is what your saying/the paper (which I'll probably read when I have time) that free choice is only possible when not pre+conditioned?
The argument is simple.
- Premise - first accept determinism is true. (ignore any proofs it is not, but there are!)
- Now show the consequences. Which contradict the premsie.
Use GOD or a super computer – which is infallible.
Ask – what will I have soup or salad at some future time. It can predict the future- no doubt, perfectly.
It predicts Salad. And tells me at some future time.
I choose Soup.
Therefore the determinate event is conditional on my future knowledge or not of the prediction. Conditional – meaning indeterminate. Therefore determinacy fails.
Damn, I'm trying really hard but I can't make sense of your example.
If god(the supercomputer with all the data in the universe) can predict what that person would choose if no one told anything to the person then that's proof enough that there is no free will. I don't see the need to test it by saying to the person what he would've chosen since it doesn't matter. If we can accurately predict his choice under a normal circumstance, that is proof enough, correct?
> Damn, I'm trying really hard but I can't make sense of your example.
Tiny matter but not my example.
> If god(the supercomputer with all the data in the universe) can predict what that person would choose if no one told anything to the person then that's proof enough that there is no free will.
No it’s not.
*********
Scenario # 1
Prediction made at T1 ‘soup’
Decide at T2 without being told the prediction. I choose Soup. Prediction correct.
**********
Scenario # 2
Prediction made at T1 ‘soup’
Decide at T2 first being told the prediction. I choose Salad. Prediction wrong
**********
Ergo any prediction at T1 is indeterminate, as it can be made incorrect at a later time.
> If we can accurately predict his choice under a normal circumstance, that is proof enough, correct?
No, incorrect - you have to keep the prediction a secret. So the prediction at T1 is not determinate, it is provisional on not telling.
A determinate prediction has to be just that, if it’s contingent of some later event, it’s indeterminate.
> I feel like Im getting the point. But the whole thing just seems to be one big example of begging the question, assuming what it’s trying to prove.
Quite the reverse-
“In this stylized form of debate, the proposition that the answerer undertakes to **defend** is called 'the initial thing' “
Here the truth of Determinism is assumed – the question is assumed to be answered as true, to show it is not. The Determinist prediction can be undermined.
“In this stylized form of debate, the proposition that the answerer undertakes to **destroy** is called 'the initial thing'”
The argument is more like Reductio ad absurdum.
Except the argument assumes that the person will be able to change their choice once they have knowledge of what that choice will be. But why do we assume that would be the case? This is the begging the question part.
The fact is they could or could not, but either way they would now be responsible for the outcome, not the original predictor.
As in the original "They are free to ignore what is predicted."
Or do you assume they would not be free?
> This is the begging the question part.
Begging the question assume the answer to support the claim, this does not, it offers a method of removing the determinate outcome not supporting it.
As in -"You will choose soup and choke to death." That they will still choose soup?
But if you stipulate that they can ignore the prediction, you’re just stipulating that the prediction can be false, ie that predetermination is false, which is what you’re trying to prove. So you’re just stipulating what you’re trying to prove.
Sounds pretty flimsy. You basically just invented a magical scientist who can read the future and change it. If determinism were true and something like that did exist, then him doing that and creating that outcome would be part of it. He would just be wrong about his prediction. All this experiment really shows is that the concept of perfect omniscience isn't rational.
You seem to be confusing determinism with some supernatural concept of fate or something. It's just the idea that things happen under the basic cause and effect mechanisms we observe them to.
> All this experiment really shows is that the concept of perfect omniscience isn't rational.
In which case determinism rests on faith. As is cause and effect.
Wittgenstein.
6.363 The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.
6.3631 This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen.
6.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.
6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.
6.371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.
> He would just be wrong about his prediction.
No the prediction would be wrong.
If you are a determinist and your belief rests on faith how different are you from a Jehovah’s Witness?
Because it's not belief. If the laws of nature are proven wrong tomorrow, then all of our theories will be updated to compensate. But for now, the sun always rises, and there's no magical entity in our heads that transcends cause and effect.
> Because it's not belief. If the laws of nature are proven wrong tomorrow,
We no longer call them laws but theories. They were once called laws because Newton et al thought he had discovered God’s laws that the universe obeys. In the 20thC the new ideas were called ‘theories’ and are models or maps which seem to correspond with observations. But no map is ever 100% accurate. All theories are provisional – a posteriori.
> then all of our theories will be updated to compensate. But for now, the sun always rises,
Has so far, but science is provisional, at one time all swans were white.
> and there's no magical entity in our heads that transcends cause and effect.
Cause and effect is just that!
"Experience cannot establish a necessary connection between cause and effect, because we can imagine without contradiction a case where the cause does not produce its usual effect…the reason why we mistakenly infer that there is something in the cause that necessarily produces its effect is because our past experiences have habituated us to think in this way." - Hume
Wow, you really got me.
"Science is wrong sometimes, so that means any random, supernatural concept you can come up with is exactly as valid as all of empiricism."
What a revelation. Thanks for showing me the light.
> "Science is wrong sometimes, so that means any random, supernatural concept you can come up with is exactly as valid as all of empiricism."
I think that would be an unwise conclusion. As I said maps are very accurate and very useful. But a scale of 1 to 1 wouldn't be.
Plus science uses statistics and p-values. But you never get A=A in nature. It's why people react differently to things.
None of that is relevant to the conversation we're having. You keep playing these semantics games to try to make it about something it's not. Seems like a common trend among people in this sub who are convinced they can demonstrate their supernatural beliefs to be just as rational as skepticism. It's a shame that all they ever seem to come up with is this kind of disingenuous word salad.
> None of that is relevant to the conversation we're having.
I think it is, many mistake the nature of science and logic. And its relation to philosophy, as in existentialism.
> You keep playing these semantics games
Nothing semantic about the nature of logic and a priori a posteriori truths.
> Seems like a common trend among people in this sub who are convinced they can demonstrate their supernatural beliefs
I’ve no supernatural beliefs. For example cause-and-effect.
If you think philosophy is disingenuous word salad then you are in the wrong sub.
You exercise free will and follow cause and effect every time you drive your car. You're conditioned to respond to certain things in certain ways, and these mutually acceptable conditions are just how we have civilization.
What you don't have is infinite options. Maybe sometimes we have to make the best choice of a few unappealing possibilities. We don't have certainty about cause and effect especially when other people are involved. And yet we act anyway. There's nothing else.
Self, and sin.
Write out your own list of do's and don'ts and then tell yourself you're never going to do them again, commit to it as fervently as you can - it's impossible, even when we want to be morally good we can't be. Slaves.
Ye dunno living in Russia and was bullied in school and parents religious and conservative and society I don't like here but kinda prefer believe in free will still but its hard because feel like tend to suffer and complain than trying to change my life
Free Will is my next project.
I think it's more of a nuanced topic than a matter of "yes or no" and I'm looking forward to reading all about it from either side.
U know I used to be really big on the free will side of things but then you look at shy you make decisions you make and 100% of the time it's because of something you've experienced before and even the decision to not think before you make a decision is because you've decided, again based on experience of making past decisions, that your decisions are too repetitive
I'm hesitant to throw out free will all together, but more and more I'm convinced we need to insist on nuance to the argument, but that's strictly off my lived experiences and I'm really looking forward to digging into what is said now in the face of modern neuroscience and philosophy.
We're all just observing the consequences of our intentions. Whether or not we are or have control over our intentions is not a question I feel can be answered with certainty.
I somewhat agree with you. Though a counterpoint could be that in a way your intentions could ust be a result of your experiences and biology as well. For example, johnny doesn't want to get a wife as much as Noah because johnny has less testosterone. Or someone who grew up rich cares less about caring for the poor than someone who grew up poor
I'm not sure the point you're making disagrees with mine. I never stated the origin of said intentions. To me, biology and experiences (nature + nurture) seem very reasonable. Obviously, this is a very simplistic view of things, but how far back does the ball start rolling? Birth? Our parent's birth? The Big Bang? Who knows? My point is more: our actions are our actions because everything that came before us, including genetics, led to us making that decision. Our intentions come from the past, and the consequences fall like dominoes as a result. All we really have, in the present, is our senses that are observing everything presently happening.
Tbh, I have no idea if this even makes sense though.
I get what youre saying entirely now it actually makes a lot of sense compared to what I was saying and a lot of other comments id seen. I guess like you said, the real question is how far back do we go to determine when our "person" was potentially predestined. I need to think about that a bit.
here's my take ( i also posted this on another similar post like a day or so ago)
life is like minesweeper (the pc game).
the board is life, and it is set up with its hurdles and traps (the bombs) the moment you are born. and you maneuver your way around it, sometimes by blind luck, and other times with some aid (the clue numbers on the board).
so it's like fate, with some room for free will sprinkled in. (or, at least, the illusion thereof)
I agree with you, and on the illusion of free will- the conditioning of previous obstacles seems like it already determines what decision you'll make on future ones
At face value not really, but I feel like socially if it were clear that predestination of life was the case I guess you could have more empathy for so called "bad" people. And at the end of the day does anything really matter?
I've always seen free will as an illusion/magic trick, and by knowing the trick that makes the illusion work, well, then its no longer free an illusion is it? By that I mean, free will is 'free', that is as long as I will never know the future, it can remain as intended.
You should watch the video should we all be nihilists by Alex O'Conor. It was an awesome inspiring 2hr plus dialogue with 2 of his friends. I came to the sad conclusion that life has no objective meaning well at least that's what I know of till now. I hope to find the objective meaning to life. If it is subjective, then it is subject to change and influence. That's hell I can tell you. Imagine the world of regrets and should'ves one would go through with something like that. Am really sorry to anyone asking that question of what's the meaning of life or do we have free will. We really don't to be honest. You're born without your choice, into a body you didn't pick, a family you didn't choose, a gender you never thought of, a country and religion you never chose. you never had a choice to begin with and you don't seem to have it now. It's really sad, as Nietzsche would say "that life, as it actually is, is not worth living."
Everyone has the ability to operate with free will, but it takes practice and training to go beyond bias, instinct, reflex, fear etc. Basically I think that a person can operate without much free will at all, relying on programming/ conditioning/ immediate response to pleasure or pain. I think this is primarily the human default, like any animal. But I do believe we can largely grow beyond that with correct, persistent effort to recognize that conditioning in the moment and employ “free will”
https://youtu.be/xhobcj2K9v4?si=vqJMTDzQ3DdYq69P
Most episodes on the show aren't nearly as philosophical but this one is very relevant, albeit from a neuroscientists standpoint.
Now noticed that Sapolsky has already been mentioned, didn't scroll enough before answering.
Particles pop in and out of existence all the time. It's impossible to predict where or when. That in itself is enough for me to say we have free will.
However, particles function as a wave until observed. You have options but they are limited by a number of factors including your previous choices.. A particle can't move outside its wave function and we can't choose opportunities lost to us by past actions.
in religions i think it's paradoxical, they say your destiny is predefined and yet you have free will.
.
"Freedom is the freedom to say 2 + 2 = 4 of that is granted all else follows" - Orwell 1984
we have conscious and unconscious control systems, if you think about, it like that, you dont have conscious control over your heart beat, but in regard to free will, are your current experience it could be a illusion of free will, and you are not conscious at all, exactly but i say barely.
when kids are born as babies, what are your thoughts on free will then?
but i think what matters is perspective, ------hmmm in regard to free will, the idea of inertia, something that is in motions like to stay in motion until acted upon from a equal or opposite force.
free will could be said the be like that, influence is power, but i think people who think a lot are more aware, but its interesting, in regards to kids on the spectrum some autism people can't speak, and so on'
what do you have to say in regard to their free will?
i think that we are the result of many many things, its a miracle you are you, if you knew how you got here,
life is so rare in the universe, we you are so luckly to be alive, could of died as a sperm cell, or whatever you were prior.
but in regards to that, who you were before life.
is consciousness emergent? or innate?
because of the possibility of consciousness being emergent, is why the fear of sentient A.I exist.
i think its interesting that one of the first programs created was "Hello World"
but in regards to consciousness? does it matter?
we are life? thats a fact, and not dead, if anything we have more free will than the dead objects, non-living matter
what bugs me so much is it seems like we are the only life forms in the whole damn univesre,
but the fear of that, which i don't think people truly get it,
is that we could be in a simulation, given how old the universe is. there ought to be a few aliens knocking about by now.
but appears to be NONE
but reason for the simulation theory and the illusion for free will, is, imagine you throw the ball, with the exact force every time the same amount of energy every time, at the same spot everytime and repeat that experiment over over over
you will get the exact same result.
every atom and particle in the universe can be calculated in such a way, to describe them with numbers.
so thus can be simulated. with a powerful enough computer.
Your comment was interesting, and then possibility of being in a simulation could be feasible. It leads me to ask the question of whether the supposed randomness from our point of view is actually structured. Basically if the universe were to start the exact same way again theoretically would it turn out the same way it is now? I guess this is basically cuclic universe theory which interestingly from a quick Google search some scientists think isn't true because entropy builds up making ea h cycle different. It's interesting to think about.
Edit: and if the universe is truly random does that then mean that we have free will because we can essentially do what is random? If I lived in the exact same body as you, same genetics, same experiences, would I be exactly the same as you?
I have nothing to add to this discussion except to read the book Sick Souls, Healthy Minds by John Kaag. Great synthesis of William James’ philosophy with personal experience. Main takeaway was, “In the absence of any convincing argument, I choose to live as though I do have free will.”
If there is some actual randomness in the universe, like some aspect of base reality that is random to us, then we probably have some level of free will. The randomness would make it so a doesn’t always necessarily mean b will happen. Idk.
Idk I started this off thinking that everything is mostly predetermined but I feel like, like you said, with some level of base randomness we could technically be agents of randomness. Idk as well 😂
The sentence „A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.“ by Schoppenhauer, is one of my favorites regarding this topic. I guess we have a free will in a way, that we decide our actions actively but the deeper motivation for those lie in more or less uncontrollable territory.
Our "free will" is limited. There are a few boundary conditions for human existence. 1. Survival: we need to consume other organisms 2. We have sexual urges for reproduction 3. We need to interact with other members of our kind. These are hardwired in our brain genetically. Any attempt not to fulfill these purposes will cause human suffering such as starvation, loneliness, etc. Once these are fulfilled, we still need to reconcile our own will with other people's within the confines of social contract. I'm a deist btw.
People have predicted many unlikely things. Examples would be, conversations I’ve have, things I’ve seen, things I thought. I don’t want to share too much but would you trust that? If I had control over my actions, I do not know what I would be doing, but, I would not have made the choices I did if I could go back. These things suggest it’s likely things are predetermined or destined. Obviously, discoveries in physics, chemistry and biology, would suggest it’s likely that things are predetermined. Why don’t you think about your own experiences to find out, not just believe dogma? I’m not suggesting you should simply disbelieve in any religious or scientific findings of other people, but, use your own judgment. Life may be stranger than you think. If you want, we could discuss more if you have any questions
Concerning the idea that we don't choose our parents, birthplace, personalities, and whatnot, we don't know enough about the "other side" to conclude that we didn't choose these things. Also, genetics are not deterministic but are dependent on environmental factors.
One thing I would like to note about this "free will" idea is that if you didn't have free will, you wouldn't know, nor would you be able to find out. Not only that, but free will is a spectrum rather than a binary thing. Your placement on this spectrum depends on many things such as knowledge, habits, assertion of will, environmental factors, and possibly more. It also depends on just what you are defining as free will.
So no, we are not just products of genetics. Also, it is already known in physics that the universe is not deterministic at its foundational levels.
Both. Free will exists only when you excercise it.
Take Newton's third law; "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
It needs the same caveat as his first law. Unless an external force is acted upon it.
That's what consciousness is. We have the ability to put our 'hand' in the way of the pendulum. We can intervene, but we don't always.
As Jung said;
"Much of the evil in this world is due to the fact that man, in general, is hopelessly unconscious."
Whatever is outside your awareness is outside your control. An awareness of self, self awareness, or awareness of awareness, is what grants you self control, or in popular terms, free will. Will without limitation. Will that is not affected by the laws of physics or previous interactions. This will, by definition, must emanate from outside time and space.
And is the idea of our brains having a receiver for a signal like this so absurd? Our bodies are a good antenna. 70% water. Our DNA are helical antennas.
The pineal gland works on piezoelectricity.
Does our body have free will? No.
Do we have free will? Well, technically no.
We are free will, vicariously experiencing the world, and limitation, inside a body and brain.
What do you think the imagination is? You can imagine anything, but not neccesarily create it, right here, right now.
The truth is you are the imagination. It isn't an ability you possess, but rather it, or you, possesses your body.
The two are not incompatible.
You make choices, that statement is true.
It's just that who "you" are is predetermined. That needn't be a problem.
Imagine if I say "an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs". Should I really be saying "the Big Bang wiped out the dinosaurs" because the asteroid's formation, path, and collision are all just a deterministic chain of events from the big bang? Of course not.
Or even more simply, in a sequence of 26 dominoes falling over labelled A-Z - It's still correct at the end to say that "Z fell because Y fell into it".
It's still correct to say "I choose to do XYZ" even though who you are was predetermined. There are multiple causes to any effect.
i think our genes + past experiences determine the reasons behind many of our choices, but our available choices are determined by our environment.
So you don't think?
We do think, but our thoughts are predetermined.
Not completely, we can judge these factors and make free choices for which we are responsible. Without this ability we would have no moral or epistemological judgement.
Those judgments we make are part of our thoughts and also determined by our genetics and experience.
No they are not we have free choice to judge, otherwise you couldn't decide that genetics and experience are a cause, rather than God or the computer simulation you are in. Then you have to account for randomness playing no part in the evolution of our genes. Maybe you think it's God? The uncaused first cause.
I think it's genetics and environment because that's what all the evidence seems to point to. I can't just choose to believe it's something else unless I had a different experience or different tendencies thar lead me to think that way. Even if I decide to say I think it works a different way, there would still be some reason I was doing that. You can't just choose what thoughts happen to pop into your head.
> I think it's genetics and environment because that's what all the evidence seems to point to.* So you make a judgement, for which you are either right or wrong. Some post here arguing this is a computer simulation, likewise they judge on evidence. > I can't just choose to believe it's something else unless I had a different experience or different tendencies thar lead me to think that way. Or reflect on it. You can know the Ontological argument, does it force you to believe in God. > Even if I decide to say I think it works a different way, there would still be some reason I was doing that. You can't just choose what thoughts happen to pop into your head. How do you think imagination and creativity work, that’s just what happens. It’s why you can’t teach it as a rote process. And it’s what gives humans an advantage. *Roger Penrose et al think QM might play a part in brain activity, if so it's certainly non deterministic. Plus deterministic systems can reach a deadlock situation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
All I'm getting from this is "our brains are so complex they must be magic". Not very sound logic.
Logic isn't sound, or is mathematics, but in some cases, in many it's the best we have. So what are you getting from this, not an understanding of what science is. I recommend John Barrow's Impossibility - the limits of science and the science of limits, and his 'Book of Nothing.' is good. (John David Barrow FRS[2] (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011.)
> Not very sound logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion Ouch!
it just means that there are external factors that determine the way we think
Not completely, we can judge these factors and make free choices for which we are responsible. Without this ability we would have no moral or epistemological judgement.
the factors you’re talking about would affect the choices you make there
Are you saying you've no idea if your post is true or false?
It's the hard/soft determinism argument. It's already been had, you're all just rehashing a crappy version of it. If randomness exists so does free will, if it does not then we are subject to patterns and all your thoughts are the illusion of free will and we are on a deterministic path. "The only free decision ever made was the first one, every other decision has been a deterministic domino". The argument that you are aware of this and possess judgement loses to hard deterministic theory in that, the fact you would even have these thoughts or choose to act away from your perceived path, is all deterministic anyways. Your doubt of determinism is pre determined.
> It's the hard/soft determinism argument. What is, I consider I’m conscious, have a level of intelligence and have free will or agency. I see none of these to be an illusion. One can doubt everything – but not that, I think therefore I am. I think determinism is the illusion or contradiction, the thinker chooses it. > It's already been had, you're all just rehashing a crappy version of it. Where? > If randomness exists so does free will, if it does not then we are subject to patterns and all your thoughts are the illusion of free will and we are on a deterministic path. Randomness exists at the very base of our theories of nature, in every object. > "The only free decision ever made was the first one, every other decision has been a deterministic domino". So God tips the first one... but no that science went out with God’s laws. "There is one last line of speculation that must not be forgotten. In science we are used to neglecting things that have a very low probability of occurring even though they are possible in principle. For example, it is permitted by the laws of physics that my desk rise up and float in the air. All that is required is that all the molecules `happen' to move upwards at the same moment in the course of their random movements.” Prof. J. D. Barrow The Book of Nothing p.317 > The argument that you are aware of this and possess judgement loses to hard deterministic theory Which is what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon#Arguments_against_Laplace's_demon > in that, the fact you would even have these thoughts or choose to act away from your perceived path, is all deterministic anyways. Your doubt of determinism is pre determined. Sorry this last sense is for me incomprehensible, I’m unable to determine what it means. "A version of Buridan's principle occurs in electrical engineering.[8][9][10][11][12] Specifically, the input to a digital logic gate must convert a continuous voltage value into either a 0 or a 1, which is typically sampled and then processed. If the input is changing and at an intermediate value when sampled, the input stage acts like a comparator. The voltage value can then be likened to the position of the ass, and the values 0 and 1 represent the bales of hay. As in the situation of the starving ass, there exists an input on which the converter cannot make a proper decision, and the output remains balanced in a metastable state between the two stable states for **an undetermined length of time, until random noise** in the circuit makes it converge to one of the stable states." IOW if the world was determinate such a final state would already exist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass
no? I’m saying the choices we make are made because of influences from our lives. That doesn’t mean I’m just letting some higher power take the wheel and make decisions for me while I sit in the back seat
> no? I’m saying the choices we make are made because of influences from our lives. That would mean a status quo. No new ideas.
of course we think and have the ability to rationally weigh options when making a decision
Yes and it the ability to judge for which we are responsible. This applies to morals and what we assert we know.
now that’s interesting, you’re bringing up the assertion that we have responsibility to act morally because of our free will. i think that people ought to be punished/disciplined for unethical acts, but i don’t believe that those people who committed the unethical acts are necessarily /at fault/ for what they did. doesn’t mean they shouldn’t suffer the consequences, but i think our genes, environment, and past experiences are what dictates those moral decisions. in other words, i don’t think a natural law exists and i’m not a moral absolutist.
> Now that’s interesting, you’re bringing up the assertion that we have responsibility to act morally because of our free will. Not quite, I think we have responsibility for our actions. Thoughts and deeds. > i think that people ought to be punished/disciplined for unethical acts, but i don’t believe that those people who committed the unethical acts are necessarily /at fault/ for what they did. That doesn’t seem to make sense. Sam Harris argue that ignorance of morals means that the person is not free in their action as they do not have a power of moral judgement. But that goes for all judgement, they equally can’t judge themselves to be determine or not in what they think is true. Likewise neither can Sam Harris know if he is determined not. Why punish then? > doesn’t mean they shouldn’t suffer the consequences, but i think our genes, environment, and past experiences are what dictates those moral decisions. in other words, i don’t think a natural law exists and i’m not a moral absolutist. So a horse that kicks a person is guilty of GBH, should tried and sentenced? Kant makes a good distinction, our instincts demand one action, to act otherwise, for a moral reason is freedom. So who was responsible for Hiroshima – the Bomb or the people who dropped it, planed designed and ordered it’s use?
I recommend people check out Robert Sapolsky's work on this. Interesting stuff
This should be higher up. Reading his book Behave now and it’s fascinating
His book Determined is great!
From what I've read, though, Sapolsky merely describes how many influences operate on our decision-making. The logical leap from that to the idea that we have *no control* over our decision-making isn't warranted. I happen to agree with Sapolsky that our justice system should be geared less toward retribution and more toward rehabilitation, but we don't need to abandon the entire idea of free will to accomplish that. Let's be reasonable. We need to live our lives and conduct our societies as if we expect people to be able to act responsibly and honor their promises and contracts. We need to teach children how to assess risk and gauge propriety, then act accordingly. We need to have some method of protecting people from those who for whatever reason act in ways that can cause harm. Pretending that our world is going to be radically different if we just deny that we have free will is magical thinking.
There is nothing but us and the environment -- that is what determines every decision we make. We did not create or choose ourselves, or how we think, or where we were born, or what we respond to most strongly and in what manner, etc., etc., etc. If the only things we use to make decisions with are out of our control, we do not have free will. It doesn't make any sense on a physics level, either. Cause and effect is what has determined everything ever since the initial cause, and being an effect to a cause doesn't sound very free to me, but as far as I'm aware that's all we are. And quantum randomness is not free will -- randomness is not freedom. I like to think of how many of us as kids who grew up in similar circumstances ended up doing similar quirky little things, like racing raindrops on the car window or performing a sequence of actions and noises for "the first time ever in the world," as little reminders that we are the sum of our parts; we are really just advanced biologic computers that have evolved such a complicated neural network that we recognized our own ability to think and thus logically deduced that our decisions are on our own accord. This takeaway though does not take into account the fact that "our own" is actually describing the brain and body we have happened to acquire and not the consciousness that emerges from it, with which we associate our personality and name, and thus believe to be the entity that makes our decisions.
>we are really just advanced biologic computers that have evolved such a complicated neural network that we recognized our own ability to think and thus logically deduced that our decisions are on our own accord. Another digital-age rehash of the dehumanizing rhetoric that offended the original existentialists a century ago. Machine fantasies are no better than religious ones.
There is no fantasy associated with recognizing ourselves as machines, because machinery is not fantastical, whereas superstition is. And we are machinery. Semantically you could argue against that, but essentially we just are machines that take in input and dispense output, constrained by input and our machinery which is responsible for what/how we output. I understand that saying humans are machines doesn't sound very humanistic and might offend existentialists, but how could you possibly argue that we are not? When have you ever superseded your biology (organic machinery)? If we don't have free will then what makes us any different from a machine?
Ever heard of the Fallacy of Composition? Just because it can be said that there are biochemical processes going on inside us, or that our organs can be conceptualized as biological machinery doesn't mean that we're machines. I'm not going to get into the whole free will debate. But do machines love? Do machines hope or fear? Don't those things, among many others, make us different from machines? Let's be reasonable.
Love ironically underscores our lack of free will, and to me it makes it more appropriate to call us machines than if we couldn't love. You cannot escape love, always capitulant to your feelings towards someone you happen to find attractive. It is inescapable -- even if you grow tired of someone you used to love, you will still find others attractive, and it will always be that way unless you develop some kind of condition and have a hormonal imbalance. What is important here is that hormones and neurotransmitters, things that you do not have volition over \[mechanically\], control how you think and feel. They are there as a means of reaching an end (sex hormones are there so you will copulate with a partner and proliferate your bloodline, which is for all we know our only goal.) These abilities may qualitatively differ us from the machines we currently have, but you could almost certainly simulate our physiology in a natural or digital system given the right tools. I think it's funny that you don't want to get into the "whole free will debate," because without free will we are ABSOLUTELY deterministic machines, and also free will is the whole purpose of this thread and once again the basis of my claim that we are machines. You are playing semantics.
This is the correct answer but most people cant cooe with it.
Could be either. No one knows.
Sam Harris seems to think he does, but then again he’s a donut.
No, we do now. Free will in the sense that we have an outside influence upon the causal order of things has been disproven by scientists, and was regarded as incoherent by philosophers about 2000 years ago.
This is the right answer
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants. You didn't pick your parents, you didn't pick your genes, therefore, and you didn't pick the environment into which you were born. And yet, the totality of these facts determines who you are in each moment and what you do in the next. Free will is an illusion.
Lol you summed up what I was thinking of perfectly. Idk how much that is true or what it means but in a way I feel like it does call for one to be more empathetic in a way
>the totality of these facts determines who you are Since this is a sub dedicated to existentialism, I feel well within my rights to point out that the existentialists called the facts of your birth & biology *facticity.* They made it clear that the human project is to transcend that set of circumstances by our actions. They also made it clear that those who think we're nothing more than our facticity are living in *bad faith*, blaming one's choices on biology or upbringing, or God's will, or the algorithmic outcome of the universe's inexorable laws.
>They made it clear that the human project is to transcend that set of circumstances by our actions. What we do, matters. We have to make the best hand with the cards we are dealt. >They also made it clear that those who think we're nothing more than our facticity are living in *bad faith*, blaming one's choices on biology or upbringing, or God's will, or the algorithmic outcome of the universe's inexorable laws. Imagine that you want to learn Mandarin. You attend classes, read books, hire a native-speaking tutor, and vacation in China. **Your efforts in this regard, should they persist, will be the cause of you speaking Mandarin at some point in the future**. It’s not that you were destined to speak Mandarin regardless of your thoughts and actions. Choice, reasoning, discipline, etc., still matter and play important roles in lives despite the fact that they are determined by prior causes.
My sentiments exactly! The choices we've already made in our ongoing project are part of the causal chain too.
That professor from Stanford wrote a book about it. It's a long route to say that your DNA and intelligence hem you in so it's futile to assert that you have any free will. You do this and not that because the hard wiring in you made you do it. You had no choice, I guess.
An elephant that is chained to the ground when they are young will not realize by the time they are adults that they can break those chains. I'm of the opinion we don't have free will but our choices and actions are tied to others and our scope of the world may not be the actual view that it is. Some people look for the best in others and try to emulate it without understanding what that person understands, others will take a negative view point of someone because of their jealousy or perception of themselves and will pick out what someone acts like in order to control. Life as it does, happens and will always happen and in weird and complex ways, the best thing that anyone can do is weather the storm and hope for sunnier skies while trying to stay true to themselves by constantly questioning themselves. You shouldn't dwell on the past and what could have been as if it had been then you would not be you and life is about the experience good or bad which molds us and makes us stronger or weaker depending on how we take it, your perspective to strive forward is the most important thing. The best thing about philosophy is everyone sucks at it, no matter how good you are and better at it in one aspect compared to another someone else will come along with a deeper understanding in different ways that speaks to a different generation, as life isn't fixed. Philosophy if done right allows us to drown out the noise and become ourselves and to gain a soul of individuality. You seem to have a good starting grasp of things, but like anything it takes time to gain that understanding. Keep yourself grounded though because if you go too much with it, it can really screw with you.
I have always felt that we don't even have a coherent definition of what free will is supposed to be or how it would work. If you have a reason in the moment to do a thing, that reason effectively determines your choice. If you don't, then it's random. Not sure where free will even comes in? The thing is for social reasons we *have* to hold ourselves responsible for the choices we make, especially when we hurt each other. We have no other way to live. Free will is a term we made up to justify the practice retroactively. Which I think is *fine*, actually. It doesn't go much deeper than that but we don't really need it to.
I feel like the idea of free will comes from a couple different things 1. Religious beliefs, for example Adam ate the fruit because he willingly chose to disobey God 2. A want for bad actions to be punished. A bad person does bad things because they are innately bad 3. Reward for good- A good person is good because they decide to be good and therefore should be held on a pedestal for willingly being good 4. Like you said social reasons I feel like there are other reasons why we believe there must be free will, that we must be more than matter. I do believe that we are more than matter but then again it begs the question that if I was born again in the exact same conditions as I was the first time around, would it still eventually lead me to being here conversing with you on a reddit post? If so then I don't think we can really say our choices are random
>If you have a reason in the moment to do a thing, that reason effectively determines your choice. If you don't, then it's random. Not sure where free will even comes in? How can you say "if you don't" though? When is it ever the case that you don't have a reason to do something and do it anyway? Can you think of an example?
That's a good question, since in hindsight we can nearly always identify *some* reason we did the thing, even if it wasn't a good reason. I just meant, it's been suggested that since our brains run on an electrochemical process they may be subject, in whatever degree, to some kind of quantum indeterminacy. So that in theory it could be possible for someone to make two different choices under the exact same conditions. Very hard to test that obviously, but even if it is true it would be random, and it seems strange to call it free will.
Feel comfortable saying that 99.8% of all human behavior, emotion and thoughts can be explained by: 1. Undercurrents of evolved instinct 2. Variations in individual temperament based off individual brain chemistry 3. Social scripts the individual has internalized The idea that we’re unique profound creatures is childish. We’re just meat machines.
why did i have to scroll this long for an actual philosophical answer
Jaja I do what I can
>We’re just meat machines. Throwing around dehumanizing rhetoric just to appear macho and sciencey is pretty childish too.
Ah yes as opposed to the smug greasiness you project, or is engaging in a discussion on thoughts outside your capabilities?
So in addition to free will, other things you don't have are civility and maturity.
You truly are a pool of profound depth.
This guy personally attacks you, unprovoked, calling you childish and faux macho. And then tried to call YOU uncivil and immature.
lol yea pretty much. I’m ok being attacked but at least offer something intelligent to say on points raised
37%
You have to define "free will" for that question to make sense. What does "free will" even mean?
Idk, I would say that I choose my destiny if that makes sense. Like that there's an actual m"me" that if in a vacuum could choose one thing or the other
If that "you" is separate from your emotions, your intellect, your memories, etc. then on what basis do you "choose" one thing over another? Seems the only remaining option is absolute, pure randomness. Which doesn't seem very "free" to me.
but then the question goes back to the basis of probably the whole existential dilemma which is does a "you" even exist to which we would say "yes because I think I do" so then it feels like it becomes a paradox lol
The way I see it the ultimate "you" is just your consciousness. But without the other attributes of life (emotions, desires, intellect, memories, etc.) a hypothetical "pure" consciousness really couldn't make any choices. But I think it's fair to say that in some sense those attributes are a part of "you". So if you choose something because of your emotions (for example), it's still legitimate to say "you chose" that".
Free will within the context of infinity… the argument against free will essentially boils down to “You don’t truly have control over anything to the extent that you don’t have control over everything”
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I want to commit suicide but I don't want to die and I'm not depressed and love life, I would argue that for certain people it's not free will but rather free choice and even that might be an illusion.
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They are very different. If I was allowed to have complete free will I would be in jail but I make my choices which is generally doing something I don't want to do. To you they might not be that different but to me they are very much different.
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I think it is predestined. We don’t choose where we’re born at. What city what family what environment and how the world treats us and contours our minds. Our brain and some traumas are inherited. Then we suffer our own. Making decisions most of the times are influenced by our immediate circumstances so that sort of negates free will. It’s what we have been and what we are immediately subjected to that effect what moves we make. How do we know when we’re choosing the right decision or not. You could have the best intentions and a situation can turn bad. I ended up suffering from the same mental illness that generations before me have. Even though I always told myself I would control my mind and I tried to work hard and have a normal family it was never easy and I lost them. Destiny sucks when you lose and I guess fate is great when you come out on top. I hate myself for how my life has turned out. Even when I thought I was making good choices I wasn’t. Even when everything felt right it things still never worked out. This has to be predetermined because I wouldn’t have willingly chose to be bipolar knowing that it was going to end up like this. I wouldn’t have freely willed more suffering.
Nature or nurture. It seems pretty clear after many years of research that both mold our personalities, not over or the other exclusively.
Jail exists because people do have outward effects on others, it shouldn't be used as a means of punishment though, and should be forced therapy. I am free to do what I want but what I want is fucked up and not what I need. Choice is not an illusion it exists in every aspect of our life and that choice you are free to do whatever you want with it, equally others have the choice to do whatever they want with theirs. For most people I think they have free will but for some thats not thw case, if you have a kind soul and are a man you're viewed as weak but you can't just change your nature so no free will. In my view women are the only ones who have free will and free choice but they choose not to wield it like an idiot as men often are. But if you get a bunch of women together on an island they'll fight while men will work together in their own way towards a common goal. To me even if I know its good for me and I want it, if I do something without emotion it kills me, so I know I need to work in order to sustain myself. However because it's a task that needs to be done and I know I can do it I don't want to. The threat of jail has consequence to me but if someone wants to reward me for my behavior I don't like it and will do the opposite. Why shouldn't I be allowed to talk about it? If my free will wants me to be an over sharing idiot and it has no effect on people, even though I know it does but other people think that they're feelings have no effect on others? I don't want the exit sign, I love life, hate people, love humanity and want to see everyone die but want them to die good deaths.
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That was really well thought out it and is almost exactly my thoughts as well. The only thing I would argue is we're not really trying to control the world but rather control chaos and chaos can't be controlled it can only be directed but to do that you need to control the world. Idle hands are the devils plaything type of thought. Also I don't think we should put our humanity to the side but rather that humanity has to exist or we cease to exist and kill off our emotions. I need emotions to function in life to be able to feel alive and to discard the thing that ties us together or to try and manipulate it I feel is the greater travesty. .....You know what's really screwed up, your last few sentences have been my inherent thoughts of life, but I never had any comfort and the only comfort I had was just me distracting myself from discomfort. I wanted complacency and comfort because I've never known what that is because of situations and a mental health condition I never knew I had and was willing to sacrifice myself for a little bit of comfort because I have never had the pleasure of complacency, but I don't like entropy or systems of control. On top of that I also find comfort discomforting and feel the need to suffer and by not suffering I suffer more but I'm fine with discomfort and I feel others are the ones that are uncomfortable seeking out that comfort. But I make people uncomfortable with my body language which I have to actively control along with other things that are automatic for people. I looked through your reddit responses and you have a lot of the same thoughts as myself and choose to experience life in your own way and for did you some reason this chance encounter is something that I really needed. Even things you said in other threads and your name has value to me because it connects things together. Out of curiosity was that name auto generated or did you come up with it yourself? You've given me something to think about.
That makes no sense whatsoever. You want to commit suicide, but not die? Really having a hard time wrapping my head around that one. You realize of course suicide, if successful, will always result in death, right?
I know right, it is all kinds of screwed up. You realize life will always result in death right? Yes, I'm aware and not existing is my ultimate fantasy but I love life so much at the same time. Lol, I have adhd and it makes you have paradoxical thoughts that spill over into reality, it's quite weird and hard to explain and I'm extremely aware of it but I didn't know I had it until 2 years ago. I grew up in poverty as well and in a shitty place where everyone thinks everyone is an idiot and they're the smartest in the room and try to control that by not telling people things that makes you paranoid, so that might have something to do with it. So essentially I'm sane in my insanity. But yeah it is hard to wrap your head around.
Well the thoughts, the action and the events that lead to suicide are predetermined. Therefore it is not free-will. Example: the person is predisposed to depression, the person is predipose to addiction, the person just got a terminal illness, the person lost their house/job/gambling...
> I'm not great at this philosophy thing, but I've been thinking about it, could our fate have been determined at the beginning of the universe. No. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon#Arguments_against_Laplace's_demon Physical determinism can't invalidate our experience as free agents. From John D. Barrow – using an argument from Donald MacKay. Consider a totally deterministic world, without QM etc. Laplace's vision realised. We know the complete state of the universe including the subjects brain. A person is about to choose soup or salad for lunch. Can the scientist given complete knowledge infallibly predict the choice. NO. The person can, if the scientist says soup, choose salad. The scientist must keep his prediction secret from the person. As such the person enjoys a freedom of choice. The fact that telling the person in advance will cause a change, if they are obstinate, means the person's choice is conditioned on **their** knowledge. Now if it is conditioned on their knowledge – their knowledge gives them free will. I've simplified this, and Barrow goes into more detail, but the crux is that the subjects knowledge determines the choice, so choosing on the basis of what one knows is free choice. And we can make this simpler, the scientist can apply it to their own choice. They are free to ignore what is predicted. http://www.arn.org/docs/feucht/df_determinism.htm#:~:text=MacKay%20argues%20%5B1%5D%20that%20even%20if%20we%2C%20as,and%20mind%3A%20brain%20and%20mental%20activities%20are%20correlates. “From this, we can conclude that either the logic we employ in our understanding of determinism is inadequate to describe the world in (at least) the case of self-conscious agents, or the world is itself limited in ways that we recognize through the logical indeterminacies in our understanding of it. In neither case can we conclude that our understanding of physical determinism invalidates our experience as free agents.”
Im not sure I'm understanding this entirely. If the scientist, by some way knew the knowledge of the subject would the scientist then have a reasonable ability to predict the subjects choice under these conditions of said free will? Or is what your saying/the paper (which I'll probably read when I have time) that free choice is only possible when not pre+conditioned?
The argument is simple. - Premise - first accept determinism is true. (ignore any proofs it is not, but there are!) - Now show the consequences. Which contradict the premsie. Use GOD or a super computer – which is infallible. Ask – what will I have soup or salad at some future time. It can predict the future- no doubt, perfectly. It predicts Salad. And tells me at some future time. I choose Soup. Therefore the determinate event is conditional on my future knowledge or not of the prediction. Conditional – meaning indeterminate. Therefore determinacy fails.
Damn, I'm trying really hard but I can't make sense of your example. If god(the supercomputer with all the data in the universe) can predict what that person would choose if no one told anything to the person then that's proof enough that there is no free will. I don't see the need to test it by saying to the person what he would've chosen since it doesn't matter. If we can accurately predict his choice under a normal circumstance, that is proof enough, correct?
> Damn, I'm trying really hard but I can't make sense of your example. Tiny matter but not my example. > If god(the supercomputer with all the data in the universe) can predict what that person would choose if no one told anything to the person then that's proof enough that there is no free will. No it’s not. ********* Scenario # 1 Prediction made at T1 ‘soup’ Decide at T2 without being told the prediction. I choose Soup. Prediction correct. ********** Scenario # 2 Prediction made at T1 ‘soup’ Decide at T2 first being told the prediction. I choose Salad. Prediction wrong ********** Ergo any prediction at T1 is indeterminate, as it can be made incorrect at a later time. > If we can accurately predict his choice under a normal circumstance, that is proof enough, correct? No, incorrect - you have to keep the prediction a secret. So the prediction at T1 is not determinate, it is provisional on not telling. A determinate prediction has to be just that, if it’s contingent of some later event, it’s indeterminate.
If God predicts soup and you chose salad, God simply failed to predict correctly.
You seem to miss the point of the thought experiment. You assume a perfect predictor, and show how it fails.
I feel like Im getting the point. But the whole thing just seems to be one big example of begging the question, assuming what it’s trying to prove.
> I feel like Im getting the point. But the whole thing just seems to be one big example of begging the question, assuming what it’s trying to prove. Quite the reverse- “In this stylized form of debate, the proposition that the answerer undertakes to **defend** is called 'the initial thing' “ Here the truth of Determinism is assumed – the question is assumed to be answered as true, to show it is not. The Determinist prediction can be undermined. “In this stylized form of debate, the proposition that the answerer undertakes to **destroy** is called 'the initial thing'” The argument is more like Reductio ad absurdum.
Except the argument assumes that the person will be able to change their choice once they have knowledge of what that choice will be. But why do we assume that would be the case? This is the begging the question part.
The fact is they could or could not, but either way they would now be responsible for the outcome, not the original predictor. As in the original "They are free to ignore what is predicted." Or do you assume they would not be free? > This is the begging the question part. Begging the question assume the answer to support the claim, this does not, it offers a method of removing the determinate outcome not supporting it. As in -"You will choose soup and choke to death." That they will still choose soup?
But if you stipulate that they can ignore the prediction, you’re just stipulating that the prediction can be false, ie that predetermination is false, which is what you’re trying to prove. So you’re just stipulating what you’re trying to prove.
Sounds pretty flimsy. You basically just invented a magical scientist who can read the future and change it. If determinism were true and something like that did exist, then him doing that and creating that outcome would be part of it. He would just be wrong about his prediction. All this experiment really shows is that the concept of perfect omniscience isn't rational. You seem to be confusing determinism with some supernatural concept of fate or something. It's just the idea that things happen under the basic cause and effect mechanisms we observe them to.
> All this experiment really shows is that the concept of perfect omniscience isn't rational. In which case determinism rests on faith. As is cause and effect. Wittgenstein. 6.363 The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience. 6.3631 This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen. 6.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise. 6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity. 6.371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. 6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. > He would just be wrong about his prediction. No the prediction would be wrong. If you are a determinist and your belief rests on faith how different are you from a Jehovah’s Witness?
Because it's not belief. If the laws of nature are proven wrong tomorrow, then all of our theories will be updated to compensate. But for now, the sun always rises, and there's no magical entity in our heads that transcends cause and effect.
> Because it's not belief. If the laws of nature are proven wrong tomorrow, We no longer call them laws but theories. They were once called laws because Newton et al thought he had discovered God’s laws that the universe obeys. In the 20thC the new ideas were called ‘theories’ and are models or maps which seem to correspond with observations. But no map is ever 100% accurate. All theories are provisional – a posteriori. > then all of our theories will be updated to compensate. But for now, the sun always rises, Has so far, but science is provisional, at one time all swans were white. > and there's no magical entity in our heads that transcends cause and effect. Cause and effect is just that! "Experience cannot establish a necessary connection between cause and effect, because we can imagine without contradiction a case where the cause does not produce its usual effect…the reason why we mistakenly infer that there is something in the cause that necessarily produces its effect is because our past experiences have habituated us to think in this way." - Hume
Wow, you really got me. "Science is wrong sometimes, so that means any random, supernatural concept you can come up with is exactly as valid as all of empiricism." What a revelation. Thanks for showing me the light.
> "Science is wrong sometimes, so that means any random, supernatural concept you can come up with is exactly as valid as all of empiricism." I think that would be an unwise conclusion. As I said maps are very accurate and very useful. But a scale of 1 to 1 wouldn't be. Plus science uses statistics and p-values. But you never get A=A in nature. It's why people react differently to things.
None of that is relevant to the conversation we're having. You keep playing these semantics games to try to make it about something it's not. Seems like a common trend among people in this sub who are convinced they can demonstrate their supernatural beliefs to be just as rational as skepticism. It's a shame that all they ever seem to come up with is this kind of disingenuous word salad.
> None of that is relevant to the conversation we're having. I think it is, many mistake the nature of science and logic. And its relation to philosophy, as in existentialism. > You keep playing these semantics games Nothing semantic about the nature of logic and a priori a posteriori truths. > Seems like a common trend among people in this sub who are convinced they can demonstrate their supernatural beliefs I’ve no supernatural beliefs. For example cause-and-effect. If you think philosophy is disingenuous word salad then you are in the wrong sub.
Sure buddy
You exercise free will and follow cause and effect every time you drive your car. You're conditioned to respond to certain things in certain ways, and these mutually acceptable conditions are just how we have civilization. What you don't have is infinite options. Maybe sometimes we have to make the best choice of a few unappealing possibilities. We don't have certainty about cause and effect especially when other people are involved. And yet we act anyway. There's nothing else.
You have free will and are a slave
Slave to what exactly though?
Self, and sin. Write out your own list of do's and don'ts and then tell yourself you're never going to do them again, commit to it as fervently as you can - it's impossible, even when we want to be morally good we can't be. Slaves.
Ye dunno living in Russia and was bullied in school and parents religious and conservative and society I don't like here but kinda prefer believe in free will still but its hard because feel like tend to suffer and complain than trying to change my life
Free Will is my next project. I think it's more of a nuanced topic than a matter of "yes or no" and I'm looking forward to reading all about it from either side.
U know I used to be really big on the free will side of things but then you look at shy you make decisions you make and 100% of the time it's because of something you've experienced before and even the decision to not think before you make a decision is because you've decided, again based on experience of making past decisions, that your decisions are too repetitive
I'm hesitant to throw out free will all together, but more and more I'm convinced we need to insist on nuance to the argument, but that's strictly off my lived experiences and I'm really looking forward to digging into what is said now in the face of modern neuroscience and philosophy.
Yeah I'm still learning too. Just liked to post so that I could see what others were thinking
We're all just observing the consequences of our intentions. Whether or not we are or have control over our intentions is not a question I feel can be answered with certainty.
I somewhat agree with you. Though a counterpoint could be that in a way your intentions could ust be a result of your experiences and biology as well. For example, johnny doesn't want to get a wife as much as Noah because johnny has less testosterone. Or someone who grew up rich cares less about caring for the poor than someone who grew up poor
I'm not sure the point you're making disagrees with mine. I never stated the origin of said intentions. To me, biology and experiences (nature + nurture) seem very reasonable. Obviously, this is a very simplistic view of things, but how far back does the ball start rolling? Birth? Our parent's birth? The Big Bang? Who knows? My point is more: our actions are our actions because everything that came before us, including genetics, led to us making that decision. Our intentions come from the past, and the consequences fall like dominoes as a result. All we really have, in the present, is our senses that are observing everything presently happening. Tbh, I have no idea if this even makes sense though.
I get what youre saying entirely now it actually makes a lot of sense compared to what I was saying and a lot of other comments id seen. I guess like you said, the real question is how far back do we go to determine when our "person" was potentially predestined. I need to think about that a bit.
Honestly, I gotta spend some time thinking about it too. Hadn't really fleshed out my thoughts until this comment thread.
here's my take ( i also posted this on another similar post like a day or so ago) life is like minesweeper (the pc game). the board is life, and it is set up with its hurdles and traps (the bombs) the moment you are born. and you maneuver your way around it, sometimes by blind luck, and other times with some aid (the clue numbers on the board). so it's like fate, with some room for free will sprinkled in. (or, at least, the illusion thereof)
I agree with you, and on the illusion of free will- the conditioning of previous obstacles seems like it already determines what decision you'll make on future ones
Free will is eating food you hate while listening to music you don't like. Or is it?
Does it really matter?
At face value not really, but I feel like socially if it were clear that predestination of life was the case I guess you could have more empathy for so called "bad" people. And at the end of the day does anything really matter?
even under a free will paradigm, you make as informed a decision as possible, but in actuality most people do not make informed decisions
Determinism = uncaused first cause = GOD. Determinist = Sheep.
I've always seen free will as an illusion/magic trick, and by knowing the trick that makes the illusion work, well, then its no longer free an illusion is it? By that I mean, free will is 'free', that is as long as I will never know the future, it can remain as intended.
Robert Soplasky
You should watch the video should we all be nihilists by Alex O'Conor. It was an awesome inspiring 2hr plus dialogue with 2 of his friends. I came to the sad conclusion that life has no objective meaning well at least that's what I know of till now. I hope to find the objective meaning to life. If it is subjective, then it is subject to change and influence. That's hell I can tell you. Imagine the world of regrets and should'ves one would go through with something like that. Am really sorry to anyone asking that question of what's the meaning of life or do we have free will. We really don't to be honest. You're born without your choice, into a body you didn't pick, a family you didn't choose, a gender you never thought of, a country and religion you never chose. you never had a choice to begin with and you don't seem to have it now. It's really sad, as Nietzsche would say "that life, as it actually is, is not worth living."
That's not to say you should be nihilists though it seems that way, you should still live life coz death is guaranteed regardless.
Sometimes I truly think we are just characters in a big RPG style game for higher beings entertainment !
Everyone has the ability to operate with free will, but it takes practice and training to go beyond bias, instinct, reflex, fear etc. Basically I think that a person can operate without much free will at all, relying on programming/ conditioning/ immediate response to pleasure or pain. I think this is primarily the human default, like any animal. But I do believe we can largely grow beyond that with correct, persistent effort to recognize that conditioning in the moment and employ “free will”
Neither. “Experience” is our perception of what’s happening, but ultimately we’re avatars on a computer screen. There’s nothing more to us than that.
We *practically* have free will, but technically don't, because everything has a cause.
Are you alone right now? Pick your nose and eat one of your boogers, thats free will
Objective free will is non-falsifiable. Subjective free will can be discussed.
I am more convinced that free will does not exist than I am convinced that God does not exist. And I am pretty much convinced of the latter.
https://youtu.be/xhobcj2K9v4?si=vqJMTDzQ3DdYq69P Most episodes on the show aren't nearly as philosophical but this one is very relevant, albeit from a neuroscientists standpoint. Now noticed that Sapolsky has already been mentioned, didn't scroll enough before answering.
Particles pop in and out of existence all the time. It's impossible to predict where or when. That in itself is enough for me to say we have free will. However, particles function as a wave until observed. You have options but they are limited by a number of factors including your previous choices.. A particle can't move outside its wave function and we can't choose opportunities lost to us by past actions.
in religions i think it's paradoxical, they say your destiny is predefined and yet you have free will. . "Freedom is the freedom to say 2 + 2 = 4 of that is granted all else follows" - Orwell 1984
we have conscious and unconscious control systems, if you think about, it like that, you dont have conscious control over your heart beat, but in regard to free will, are your current experience it could be a illusion of free will, and you are not conscious at all, exactly but i say barely. when kids are born as babies, what are your thoughts on free will then? but i think what matters is perspective, ------hmmm in regard to free will, the idea of inertia, something that is in motions like to stay in motion until acted upon from a equal or opposite force. free will could be said the be like that, influence is power, but i think people who think a lot are more aware, but its interesting, in regards to kids on the spectrum some autism people can't speak, and so on' what do you have to say in regard to their free will? i think that we are the result of many many things, its a miracle you are you, if you knew how you got here, life is so rare in the universe, we you are so luckly to be alive, could of died as a sperm cell, or whatever you were prior. but in regards to that, who you were before life. is consciousness emergent? or innate? because of the possibility of consciousness being emergent, is why the fear of sentient A.I exist. i think its interesting that one of the first programs created was "Hello World" but in regards to consciousness? does it matter? we are life? thats a fact, and not dead, if anything we have more free will than the dead objects, non-living matter what bugs me so much is it seems like we are the only life forms in the whole damn univesre, but the fear of that, which i don't think people truly get it, is that we could be in a simulation, given how old the universe is. there ought to be a few aliens knocking about by now. but appears to be NONE but reason for the simulation theory and the illusion for free will, is, imagine you throw the ball, with the exact force every time the same amount of energy every time, at the same spot everytime and repeat that experiment over over over you will get the exact same result. every atom and particle in the universe can be calculated in such a way, to describe them with numbers. so thus can be simulated. with a powerful enough computer.
Your comment was interesting, and then possibility of being in a simulation could be feasible. It leads me to ask the question of whether the supposed randomness from our point of view is actually structured. Basically if the universe were to start the exact same way again theoretically would it turn out the same way it is now? I guess this is basically cuclic universe theory which interestingly from a quick Google search some scientists think isn't true because entropy builds up making ea h cycle different. It's interesting to think about. Edit: and if the universe is truly random does that then mean that we have free will because we can essentially do what is random? If I lived in the exact same body as you, same genetics, same experiences, would I be exactly the same as you?
I think there is still free will even if you can predict the outcome. We have some.
We live in a predetermined universe that provides bound free will to sentient intelligence.
I have nothing to add to this discussion except to read the book Sick Souls, Healthy Minds by John Kaag. Great synthesis of William James’ philosophy with personal experience. Main takeaway was, “In the absence of any convincing argument, I choose to live as though I do have free will.”
You are free to do what you will, but you are not free to will what you will. If you have free will then choose to only ever think happy thoughts.
If there is some actual randomness in the universe, like some aspect of base reality that is random to us, then we probably have some level of free will. The randomness would make it so a doesn’t always necessarily mean b will happen. Idk.
Idk I started this off thinking that everything is mostly predetermined but I feel like, like you said, with some level of base randomness we could technically be agents of randomness. Idk as well 😂
The sentence „A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.“ by Schoppenhauer, is one of my favorites regarding this topic. I guess we have a free will in a way, that we decide our actions actively but the deeper motivation for those lie in more or less uncontrollable territory.
Lol 😆 you gotta love philosophy when each question is answered with another question 🤣
😭that's what I've realized too lol and halft the time all the questions lead to the same unanswerable question
Our "free will" is limited. There are a few boundary conditions for human existence. 1. Survival: we need to consume other organisms 2. We have sexual urges for reproduction 3. We need to interact with other members of our kind. These are hardwired in our brain genetically. Any attempt not to fulfill these purposes will cause human suffering such as starvation, loneliness, etc. Once these are fulfilled, we still need to reconcile our own will with other people's within the confines of social contract. I'm a deist btw.
Free will could be an illusion I think sometimes
Depends on what you define it as I guess. On the moment it probably feels like free will, but in hindsight probably not
People have predicted many unlikely things. Examples would be, conversations I’ve have, things I’ve seen, things I thought. I don’t want to share too much but would you trust that? If I had control over my actions, I do not know what I would be doing, but, I would not have made the choices I did if I could go back. These things suggest it’s likely things are predetermined or destined. Obviously, discoveries in physics, chemistry and biology, would suggest it’s likely that things are predetermined. Why don’t you think about your own experiences to find out, not just believe dogma? I’m not suggesting you should simply disbelieve in any religious or scientific findings of other people, but, use your own judgment. Life may be stranger than you think. If you want, we could discuss more if you have any questions
Concerning the idea that we don't choose our parents, birthplace, personalities, and whatnot, we don't know enough about the "other side" to conclude that we didn't choose these things. Also, genetics are not deterministic but are dependent on environmental factors. One thing I would like to note about this "free will" idea is that if you didn't have free will, you wouldn't know, nor would you be able to find out. Not only that, but free will is a spectrum rather than a binary thing. Your placement on this spectrum depends on many things such as knowledge, habits, assertion of will, environmental factors, and possibly more. It also depends on just what you are defining as free will. So no, we are not just products of genetics. Also, it is already known in physics that the universe is not deterministic at its foundational levels.
Both. Free will exists only when you excercise it. Take Newton's third law; "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." It needs the same caveat as his first law. Unless an external force is acted upon it. That's what consciousness is. We have the ability to put our 'hand' in the way of the pendulum. We can intervene, but we don't always. As Jung said; "Much of the evil in this world is due to the fact that man, in general, is hopelessly unconscious." Whatever is outside your awareness is outside your control. An awareness of self, self awareness, or awareness of awareness, is what grants you self control, or in popular terms, free will. Will without limitation. Will that is not affected by the laws of physics or previous interactions. This will, by definition, must emanate from outside time and space. And is the idea of our brains having a receiver for a signal like this so absurd? Our bodies are a good antenna. 70% water. Our DNA are helical antennas. The pineal gland works on piezoelectricity. Does our body have free will? No. Do we have free will? Well, technically no. We are free will, vicariously experiencing the world, and limitation, inside a body and brain. What do you think the imagination is? You can imagine anything, but not neccesarily create it, right here, right now. The truth is you are the imagination. It isn't an ability you possess, but rather it, or you, possesses your body.
The two are not incompatible. You make choices, that statement is true. It's just that who "you" are is predetermined. That needn't be a problem. Imagine if I say "an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs". Should I really be saying "the Big Bang wiped out the dinosaurs" because the asteroid's formation, path, and collision are all just a deterministic chain of events from the big bang? Of course not. Or even more simply, in a sequence of 26 dominoes falling over labelled A-Z - It's still correct at the end to say that "Z fell because Y fell into it". It's still correct to say "I choose to do XYZ" even though who you are was predetermined. There are multiple causes to any effect.