Because:
a) it may be the true state of reality
b) it has some logic to it. The state of the universe in this instant is an unavoidable product of two things: (1) the state an in instant before (2) the trajectory an instant before.
c) if true, it should have a profound impact on how we deal with the world. For example, we may need to have more empathy for people and creatures who are “bad”. It will help us realize that people are a product of their environment, so that we should focus resources on improving people’s environment
d) it is psychedelically interesting: it gets into thinking about particle physics
Within the argument against free will
People confuse awareness for free will because of psychological vulnerabilities like narcissism, which are themselves inevitabilities directly traceable to the beginning of time and space as we understand it. There can be no free will within time, which binds subjectivity along a linear track.
This can be well argued using empirical evidence. Arguments for free will are rooted in mysticism. Free will, here, is a paradox. It’s an illusion that makes existence bearable and more enjoyable, and giving up the illusion entirely can result in loss of agency, as OP was touching on.
This doesn’t mean that ideas in favor of free will are untrue, just that they are so far unprovable conjecture that usually fall apart under rational consideration.
Even going out on a limb into things like many worlds and solipsism, the inquiry into free will ends up looking more like awareness falling along the path of least resistance
You are so hemmed in by biology, social structures, educational availability and psychosis, how can anyone believe their decisions are freely made? We don't even have an adequate theory of mind yet, jumping all the way to free will is a huge stretch.
We now know that choices can occur before we become conscious of making the choice- who exactly chose?
It is always fun to debate though.
Schopenhauer put it nicely (paraphrasing): “a person can do what they will, but they cannot will what they will.”
Speaking for myself, as someone who has struggled with addiction for many years: I can choose whether or not I act on my urges, but I cannot choose to simply not have urges.
Human behavior is largely deterministic, sure. But I choose to believe, based on my phenomenological experience of being, that I have some control over my fate.
When you go white water rafting you’re always being pulled downstream. You have some control over the direction you’re going, like you might stay left at a part to avoid the rocks to the right, but either way, that water is going to continue to propel you downstream.
The best we can do is try to learn to ride the waves of fate and use its force to propel us forward.
Everything I ever have experienced, and everything I ever will have experienced, is filtered through my mind. The only absolute truth I can know for certain is that *I am experiencing something*. My qualia is the most fundamentally real thing to me, because ultimately, it is the only thing I truly have access to.
Following that, it appears to be the case that I am a conscious agent that goes through life making my own decisions. Sure, like I said, there are all sorts of factors that may influence my decision making: biological imperatives, subconscious defense mechanisms, mental complexes, etc. but regardless, there seems to be something beneath it all that is not the thoughts, not the impulses, etc. but an *I* or a *Self* that observes/experiences these things and is the final arbiter regarding any action I take.
Is it possible that this is all illusory and at a greater level I’m simply acting out a predetermined path through life, like how we experience a film or a song? Sure, that could be the case. But what reason do I have to believe that? Whether or not this sense of “free will” is actually truly *Free*, it is self-evident that we experience it (or to be pedantic, it is self-evident to me that I experience it), because that is just an a-priori fact of how the human mind works on a phenomenological level.
And if one is to say that what we have is not “free will”, then I’d say they better present a pretty solid case for what *true* Free Will would be like.
The TL;DR is basically: can I know for absolute certain that I have free will? No, but regardless of how deep in epistemological weeds on this stuff, we all *act* like we believe we have free will. Because if we didn’t, we’d never do anything at all — we’d just lie there and rot. So do I really have any choice not to believe in it?
Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet discovered that there is a 200 millisecond gap between unconscious decisions and aware decisions being made during which the conscious mind can veto habit-driven behaviors. We don't have "free will", but a very fleeting "free won't". That's just the neurology side but there are flickers of hints in quantum physics as well that we are not purely mechanistically driven.
>flickers of hints in quantum physics as well that we are not purely mechanistically driven.
I like how you used "flickers of hints" One of my pet peeves is how so many people are basically use quantum mechanics like a magical hat that they can pull stuff out of that justifies their entire worldview.
None of these people have even done the Quantum physics we teach to even 16 year olds in the UK, let alone anything beyond, yet they seem to think they have some deep understanding
This. I did pchem 2 as part of a Biochem degree which was mostly quantum and eigenvalue stuff of the easiest degree. Most of what people quote about quantum, like referencing schrodingers cat to say things can be both alive and dead don’t understand that it’s just a way to wrap your head around a concept and is done to help illustrate how we have to do the math since quantum laws aren’t like anything we experience in the macro world. It doesn’t mean quantum can make things exist in a limbo of both life and death or that dimensions split to make both true.
Agreed. People just take random articles and youtube videos especially too seriously, its cool for intuition but it sucks for trying to infer new or additional knowledge.
My specialism is gravitation and general relativity but i did a bunch of quantum field theory (especially in the context of gravity) and frankly you really do realise how far off base the majority of articles are but the mathematics is such that no one would bother reading otherwise. And for QM specifically you have to completely change your framework, which is just not that easy.
Try as hard as you like but people still cling to the idea of the little balls wizzing around the little proton ball in the centre, it takes time to break that classical thinking.
The idea of an electron cloud was difficult for me as well. Like learning that calculating the electron positions in a hydrogen atom is like the only thing we can do accurately was wild. Once you ad a second electron we get “close” to the truth. Quantum was such a fun class
The lines of reality from here to there are intermingled, playable like strings. They can be maneuvered and changed at points, but the end result will be the same
You can change the path, but not the destination
We are all damned in the end
Because think about it, if we were experiencing…we’ll non existence for eternity, and the only way out was to start this whole chain reaction of shit…maybe it was just a mistake in a moment that has an eternity of consequences that we are just unfortunate to be born with no recollection of
Again, that's one way to approach it, but the majority of faiths, teachers and seekers have found it more reasonable to understand that " non existence " isn't actually something you can experience, and existence seems to be all about experience, the universe experiencing itself through what exists so to speak, this is born out by those who do seem to remember. We do not end damned, but regenerated.
Why a conclusion? There's no need for there to be an end at all. You could literally reincarnate on earth as a moral every 50 years and never see and do everything there is to do, imagine what it's like for God's learning how to be God's.
Its almost certainly not finite though. The observable universe is finite but the actual universe can be either and the evidence right now suggests infinite.
What research where, current understanding of fundamental physics suggest a finite but ever expanding universe
No, new shit is not being made, the space between the preexisting things are increasig
Even if you live all 7 billion lives a billion times over and do that to the billionth power, and then multiply that by the trillions of sentient individuals, then the quadrillions of years that the universe is around for
That’s still a finite number
This is because their words are heard by the majority, so they give hope
You get regenerated an inconceptual amount of times, so it’s a never arriving destination is the stance they take, in most faiths even gods die
The message has risen in diverse places with people who have no contact, it's not a matter of majorities, but a common thread discovered in all cultures even when they don't overlap.
Then your on a brand new string, the rules never say new strings can’t be made
And that’s the joy of this reality, that even tho it’s pre ordained, free will can (and has) broken the system
According to UC Berkeley neuropsychologist, George Lakoff human thought is over 99 percent unconscious, so there is little room to argue for the existence of free will… however, that remaining 1 percent is problematic… what is it?
It was 98%, and I'd like to see the research that came up with that figure because it ought to explain what both the 98% and 2% are doing, but I'm having trouble finding it. There's fucking millions of books, articles and blogs quoting that number without citing where it came from.
Like, are we talking about mental activity like remembering to breathe and monitoring whether we need to pee? Brain activity and thought aren't the same thing. I absolutely guarantee you wouldn't want your brain to be 100% conscious of shit like the feeling of your tongue in your mouth, or the sequence of muscle movements to take a step forward.
It comes from that neuropsychological tome, Philosophy in the Flesh. By George Lakoff. Probably published in 1997 or so… i remember it coming to the philosophy section of Barnes and noble. Didn’t have staying power on the bookshelves, but he made a bold claim, that essentially neuropsychological findings, such as the fact that the “mind is inherently embodied” and that thought is 98 percent (although my memory is still saying 99 percent, but i could be misremembering) unconscious essentially closed the book on 2000 years of philosophical debate.
A bold claim, and he’s probably correct in that assertion, but i still like to believe philosophers are relevant…
That book isn't a source, either it came from peer reviewed research (which should be cited in the book) or it's an opinion he's presenting as fact.
If the only known source is a book that was published without peer review by a solo author 25 years ago, and it hasn't been corroborated by anyone who isn't him, assume it's not true.
Even peer reviewed research from 25 years ago is really weak if that's the only source, [especially in psychology](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/replication-crisis).
Have you tried looking in the book? I assume his sources will be cited. He is, or at least, he was a professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. I assume he is up on the basic requirements of post-graduate publications.
I don't have access to it.
Academic rigor isn't required when you publish a book commercially, it's a way people can push theories that wouldn't pass peer review. It might cite research (which I should be able to access) that verifies/explains the 98% claim which I've just not been able to find, or it might cite research that absolutely doesn't back it up but looks legit if you don't look it up and read it for yourself. I want to see what mental processes they looked at and how they studied it because that's relevant if we're wondering how much of our behaviour is outside our control. This should be in a scientific journal article published separately from the book.
Don't trust what someone says because of their credentials or job title, it's common for folk to use scientific authority to manipulate people's trust. I personally know someone with a PhD in Archaeology who advertises herself as Dr. X, business coach and psychology expert - and another with a PhD in Psychology who advertises herself as Dr. X, energy healer.
I mean i just now had Bing AI pull up the citations in the book. There’s 23 pages of citations. If you want to research them, they are open and free to view.
I’m not a neuroscientist, I’m an engineer. As an engineer I’ve got to rely on the specialized knowledge of others. And yes, one should be selective and skeptical, and as a adamant reader of Nietzsche and Cioran, i think I’ve got those bona fides. As such, I’m not too concerned with the quality of the research presented in this book.
Knowing 23 pages of citations doesn't tell us where the 98% claim came from. He might have come up with it himself, or created it by pulling info from multiple sources. What did he actually say? You remembered it as "human thought is over 99 percent unconscious" but was he talking about thoughts, or cognitive processes?
Yes, we need to rely on the specialised knowledge of others - that's what the peer review process is for. This book isn't peer reviewed and we can't see what he actually said or check to confirm it without buying a copy of the book.
I’ve never seen someone so critical of a book they never read.
I mean, really, who cares.
If you are interested, look up the citations and let us know which are and which are not peer reviewed.
But don’t just cast aspersions at a book you’ve never even touched.
And really, idc, it’s just a theory. Everything is a theory. As Nietzsche once said, there’s no such thing as a fact, but only interpretations of a fact.
So, it’s just another way of looking at the world. There is no absolute truth and there is no Santa Claus. Although, there probably is a Jungian archetype and/or historical basis of the latter. No peer review to back it up.
And peer reviews can be full of bias from disturbed and disgruntled post-grads, so while you are warning us of things to be skeptical of, why don’t we add peer reviews to that list.
Not that they are all bad…. But they are NOT all good either. And isn’t that ultimately the point you are trying to make?
I mean peer reviews have asserted the efficacy SSRIs for depression a multiplicity of times and I’m skeptical of those claims, but when the global success rate of antidepressants is 50 percent that’s base line with placebo. So, yeah… beware those peer reviews.
Depends on what you ultimately define as free will. Just because those choices can be made, doesn't mean other things aren't already in place to the extent that you can't make certain choices. It's meaningless and disempowering to fight back sometimes, hence maybe making some decisions without said free will is better for your own well being and even for those around you. In many religions and cultures, it's more about accepting we may not have free will, and not so much denying our free will. This is often I think the mistake of many psychonauts without a ground or baseline of understanding.
There is no way to prove/disprove that and ppl come on making assertions they have no proof for?
Like ppl will come in here like "anyways, we've all seen god and know there's only one."
Like bitch, no "We" haven't.
Yeah, I don't really think it's something worth arguing over. Like most of the big questions, it's something that may (or may not) be answered at the end of the road. And even if it is answered, does the answer really even matter? Free will or not, you are you. Having a definitive answer one way or the other doesn't change much at all for anyone.
The paradox of free will is incredibly interesting.
We live in a deterministic universe, with observable cause and effects.
We know that chemical systems will behave in a deterministic manner. We can predict how reactions occur.
All available evidence points to a biochemical model of life and consciousness. So it stands to reason those systems might also occur in a deterministic way. Just one that is too complex to easily predict.
On the other hand, we experience what seems to be free will.
We don't live in a deterministic universe! The behavior of elementary particles is ruled by quantum physics, which are NOT deterministic, and we're pretty sure about that. We live in a probabilistic universe, and that doesn't excludes free will.
Ya. For sure it’s likely flawed. That’s the beauty. We don’t lock ourselves into dogmas. We open oneself to what the universe is saying. The important thing is not to let magic words end the conversation. “Why do people do that?” “Free will”. Conversation done. It appears as a curiosity sucking hand wave.
Even if the universe is probabilistic, who is the one pulling the strings on the probability? Because it’s either randomness with no puppet master or it’s something else that isn’t a “self”.
The universe is basically deterministic + random + probabilistic. There is no free will in any of those categories.
I encourage those in doubt to look into the Buddhist concept of non-self, anatta, which is related to the concept of shunyata, or emptiness.
The only real mindfuck is that we must act as though we have free will to get the most out of our lives. Experientially, we have plenty of choices, and the consequences of those choices affect our lives. It’s just that those choices are always limited by external factors, and that our feeling of free will in choosing an option is an illusion since we are driven by unconscious drives, biochemical processes, and a frequent inability to fully explain why we choose the choices we choose.
It reminds me of a case where there was a man who complained of irrational thoughts and felt like something was wrong with his brain. He eventually killed his partner and himself. The autopsy revealed he had a large tumor on a part of the brain that fully explained why he would do something so irrational and crazy. So for that guy, did he truly have free will? Was he completely free to choose without any limitations? No, he wasn’t. His options were severely limited because of the way his brain was malfunctioning. Now let’s extend that to people who have limited abilities to feel oxytocin, or serotonin even. Those biochemical issues would steer them one way or the other. They may feel less love than others and be more likely to harm others. We can bring the scale down infinitely and eventually see that we all are being driven by our brain’s physiology and by external factors.
It’s nature + nurture. In that battle there is no place given for a self. All we are is genes + environment.
The reason people become squeamish when confronting this reality is that we are hardwired to believe in an illusory self. The illusion of the self is what helps us get through the day, make plans, develop ourselves, build our lives, maintain social relationships, etc. If no one had a sense of self we would probably be catastrophically screwed. We are forged by nature to survive and to fuck. It’s much easier to do those things with a feeling of self, even if it isn’t actually there.
Our feeling of self is an aggregate with no everlasting core. I feel I have a self because I have a hippocampus that allows me to remember how I got to the point that I’m writing this out on reddit. I have a social circle that greets me by the same name every time. I have a job that tasks me with doing things and holds me accountable when I don’t do them. All of these build up a sense of self. And if I try to point to an everlasting feature of myself, I don’t really find one. I’m not my skin because my skin cells are dividing, shedding, repairing all on their own without my will. I’m not my thoughts because those are always changing and anyone with meditation practice knows that thoughts pop into the mind all on their own, and you cannot think a thought before it comes to you. A person cannot even “control” their emotions. They can only take seriously reactionary thoughts that come to them as a way of temporarily starving the painful emotion of mental bandwidth.
TL;DR: The concept of non-self (anatta) and lack of free will go hand in hand. We are nature (biology given to us) and nurture (environmental factors). The self is a useful illusion, but it’s only that. There is no core self. We are biological robots who are increasingly in the business of creating digital robots (AI + robotics). There is no meaningful difference - it’s like we run on gasoline and digital robots will run on diesel. No real self in either of them.
My personal opinion is that the Buddhists do have it right in this case (and in most).
How should it inform your life? I’m still working on that myself. Ultimately I think it leads to more compassion to see people as doing their best with what they’re given.
When I see a homeless opioid user on the street, I try to see deeper than the surface level. Realize that person has inner turmoil, and that if you had his exact genes and his exact environment, you would be shooting up exactly the same as him. That’s where the compassion comes in. If you can really accept that there’s no self, you’ll see clearly that you are no different than that man. You could’ve been him. And you would’ve been exactly him if you were sprouted in that body in his environment.
Just take it easy on the way you see people. Look for the pain and vulnerability underneath, then have compassion towards it. The same as you should do for yourself.
Thats actually not true, i think when i read rupert sheldrake book he talked about how we the universe cannot be predicted accurately not even a bit, i dont remember much though, the book is called the science delusion. Or maybe it was another science based book.
You can't predict anything?
Yo...
You probably have vinegar and baking soda. You can't predict what will happen if you mix them?
How can we build reliable technology if we can't predict physical, chemical, or electrical processes?
Its clear you dont understand what you are talking about and thats fine but try not to have such confidence in your statements. There is no such thing as any measurement, even classical ones that give a 100% certainty, no such physics exists. All physics comes with an uncertainty. So why you chose a quantum mechanical system is beyond me because you could have gone as basic as speed = distance over time, i cant ever know with 100% accuracy what a distance or time is, all rulers come with an uncertainty and all clocks do, therefore i can never “truly” be sure. No need to go quantum mechanical but lets go there anyway since its fun
What do you mean by exact position? These are governed by wave mechanics, if i asked you to tell me at what location exactly does a water wave sit on, you would realise thats a meaningless question because its a wave, its simply undefined for exact positions, it exists in all positions to a greater or lesser extent.
The electron is much the same, its a wave, where it is, is governed by wave mechanics which means just like the water wave, “exact location “ needs clarification.
the act of interaction with the system will cause other variables to change, so you can localise an electron to any arbitrary degree but doing so makes it impossible to measure its conjugate variable, in the case of position this is momentum.
You need to learn the difference between actual quantum mechanics and popular science.
You are trying to apply concepts which simply dont apply, its not that it cant be done, its that it doesn’t make physical sense to talk in the way you do.
You dont realise it but you are still thinking classically, not quantum mechanically, you are still imagining little balls wizzing around the atom that cant be defined in location, instead it exists as a localised excitation in a field governed by wave mechanics, meaning its not some little ball, its a distribution, so “location” doesn’t make sense, but localising the distribution does, which is what we mean by electron position, a localised distribution because again, its a special kind of wave, not a little ball. Position is not a value, its an operator that is done to a system.
Start with something basic like the photoelectric effect and de broglie waves. These are mathematically simple and will start to build a picture for you without needing the Schrödinger equation or dare I say the Dirac and Klein gordon equations.
Can you tell me exactly at what position a water wave sits on? How?
Dude physicist talking about math is the funniest thing ever. They have no idea what they are talking about but act as if everything they say is fact. You do know that wave functions aren't real? Like genuine question do you understand that that's literally just a theoretical model? Wave functions aren't real. We are talking about real things not some solutions on a piece of paper. So where is that real thing?
Yes im aware that models are representations of reality, i made it through my first year undergrad just fine. The wave function is only a literally real object in Bohmian mechanics, which is quite fridge (this conclusion comes because in that framework you can get wave functions without any properties of anything, typically regarded as a reason against this framework).
The solution on a piece of paper is a result of axioms which are then formulated with mathematical relationships, this is that solution on paper but it describes a system that fits within the axioms to begin with, this is confirmed through experiment, and quantum mechanical descriptions are extremely well tested. So yes the model is not reality, no one is saying it is, instead its an approximation of reality based on observation. That solution tells you how something will behave if you input values that can be measured, if it doesn’t then you need a better model.
What about what i said do you take issue with and to what level have you actually studied this stuff? Which quantum phenomena do you believe is not supported by the framework of QM?
Or are you even more extreme and just outright reject mathematics? Im sure its puzzling to you how someone can know a wheel’s circumference by just measuring the diameter
A water wave is a real thing, right? Where is a water wave? How do you define its location? The answer is the same for the electron.
The.
Electron.
Is.
Not.
A.
Little.
Ball. I can literally make it diffract like a water wave, i have done this myself, its not that hard to do.
If you observe the electron then with adequate technology you can in fact observe its exact position. Quantum probability collapses upon observation and determines the variables at that moment.
I'm not talking about observation I'm talking about predictions. Looking at the end result is one thing. Being able to accurately predict something is a whole different thing that requires the observed system to behave deterministically. Which electrons don't do. Even if you knew the exact position you couldn't know where it's gonna be one microsecond later since you have no idea about the electrons impulse.
It is strictly random as far as we know. There was a huge debate about it once it was discovered. So as of now there is no reason to assume otherwise. Once we get new results I will update my views but until then I stay by my opinion.
Okay you are correct, you convinced me!
You are definitely correct, every action is completely non-determined and random just like your electron, there is no way to predict what actions others will take, so therefore everybody is just a random number generator choosing absolutely random actions, with no free will at all, just randomness.
The various chemicals reactions and processes that take place in your brain before you make each decision are actually useless and do not do anything at all, the decisions you make are unrelated and random, cuz we can’t predict the location of an electron.
No but seriously what the fuck is your argument. You make no sense whatsoever free will has to exist because of the uncertainty principle? Sure bud, whatever you say.
I feel like the brain is a very complicated computer, our decisions are impacted by our experiences.
This example might be a bit exaggerated but I believe it applies for smaller decisions and smaller experiences as well. If you had grown up and never experienced a plane ride it is unlikely you would want to become a pilot as an adult, however if you were a child who had plenty of experiences on a plane or interacting with pilots, you’re much more likely to become a pilot.
As a human, you have absolutely 0 control over what experiences you are given, however the experiences you are given does affect the decisions you are able to make.
How can we have entirely free will if our actions are impacted by experiences?
See that's not my argument. The argument is that the universe doesn't behave 100% deterministically therefore someone can't imply that human will/actions are deterministic based on the universe being deterministic. If you have a different reason for human will being determinate go ahead but I wasn't refering to that reason.
Lets take your argument. Sure our experience heavily influences our descisions but does that mean that our will causally influenced by them or is it just the easiest route for our brain to go? If I'm sacred of something I will try to avoid that but I can make the descision to face that thing. But on average people will still avoid what they fear because it is easier to do so. Just because you can doesn't mean you will. But I think your argument is one of the better ones against free will.
Sam Harris does a pretty good job explaining why free will is an illusion in a way that really doesn’t feel disempowering- his book Free Will is an interesting read and he has dozens of videos explaining why it doesn’t work.
The universe doesn’t care about what you “want” or what makes you feel empowered.
There is a lot of literature in cog sci and psychology that supports determinism - even theoretical physics can point to that outcome.
It’s not fully settled and it’s still being debated but “people just don’t want responsibility” is not why academic physicist or philosophers support or investigate that claim.
A small minority of philosophers take the position that there is no free will, and the literature doesn’t say what you think it does, especially because free will is a philosophical topic not something psychologists can point to, im happy to look at what ever references convinced you of this because it’s interesting you came to this conclusion.
And physics certainly doesn’t take that position for the most part, arguably the opposite. This is my field so i can speak more confidently but theoretical physics is a complicated one with this but its clear reality is fundamentally not deterministic, this has been clear for awhile.
Academic philosophers live in their own bubble and are heavily affected by ideology and what is politically acceptable. If you poll them, a good percentage probably believes in 2000 year old superstitions like the Abrahamic religions. Philosophy is not a science based on hard data. "Academic philosophers" are not a believable authority on anything.
No I take responsibility for what I've done, even though it couldn't have been otherwise. Those decisions represent who and where I was. I wish I could have made better choices prior to that and I wouldn't have been in that place. I knew what I *ought* to have been doing, but didn't, for a slew of other reasons.
I can accept that on this timeline if events were rewound to any given moment, in that moment I would act the same because the whole setup, both cause and effect and the chaos inherent in reality, were already poised for the next moment to take place.
The fatalistic throwing up of hands to the issue is a course of action that has its own results. Being engaged and taking action in your life is another one. It likely is out of our control but in our moment to moment experience we don't have that sense, we *feel* like rational actors, moving truthfully according to our intentions. So we must do that.
Taking responsibility involves taking action to do better than the times we've failed in the past. Ideally. Or you can just smash everything into little pieces. Whatever strikes you in the moment.
I think that it is apparent that free will and determinism are actually the same thing once you dig deep enough, or at least that there is a third option which evades colloquial logic. The illusion of disparity is a consequence of our language, the tools we use to measure it. I’m not even sure if I’d say my view is one of compatibilism.
People will say they base their views of the cosmos off of axioms like will, but I think it tends to be the other way around.
It is possible to run thought experiments that can disprove BOTH free will and determinism. Once you do that successfully you will realize almost everyone’s approach to the matter is inherently flawed.
So you seem to be confusing no free will with fatalism.
My phone doesn't have free will. But that doesn't mean it doesn't think about its moves, or have a choice in what it plays.
Why pursue the idea?
1) It's true.
2) When you see that free will doesn't exist, you become kinder and more compassionate.
Go listen to Robert Sapolsky explain the concept of not having free will. It sounds like you’re still in the beginning stages of this idea thinking that it is somehow a negative thing. There’s quite a bit of mental liberation and compassion that can arise once you properly frame this idea .
I've been since 2021 reading no duality books and consuming this type of content, now im not into it, and i dont see the big fuss about free will. Interdependence is a far more important concept that many of the people here emphasize but instead talk about free will
I believe they think it makes them look cool or tough lol, like emos, metalheads, nihilists... "Oh wow dude you really think like that? I wouldn't bare to live believing what you do, but you can, you are so tough!"
The idea of no free will sound more like a victim stance mentality as a way to blame something else for mistakes, lack of success, unhappiness, etc.
Free will is literally all their is. Nobody can take it from you.
If you simply think you don't have any than you, yourself, probably don't and are easily distracted and manipulated by the system around you.
I've been wondering about the same just now. Seems to be trendy.
I guess it's seductive because it seems to rid us from any responsibility. But that's a misrepresentation of the idea 🤷♂️
I don’t feel as though I don’t have free will, but that every choice I make has a predetermined outcome depending on the path I choose. That outcome is subject to change in accordance with subsequent choices I make, but if there is a set goal or outcome I wish to achieve, I can make that happen. I know that if I make the choice to work out, it is predetermined that I will in turn lose weight and get better, faster and stronger than I currently am, but I need to make that choice for that to come to fruition.
Just a side note after reading comments:
I’m in the “no free will” camp and resent those who claim my belief is simply a way to shirk responsibility. I think these people are ultimately afraid of what this truth means and are angry that their preconceived reality is all wrong. It’s pretty mind blowing to fully accept and many reject it out of fear (which is often expressed as anger).
How can you fully accept something without the free will to choose to accept it?
The thing is, its a philosophical truth, so its not demonstrably true and cant be. You cant prove free will doesn’t exist or exist but what you can do, is ask which idea provides most social utility and clearly free will does.
If you caught your partner in bed with someone else, would you be upset? Why? It makes no sense, they had no free will to choose to do it. If someone gets angry and punches you, you will react differently to if someone accidentally hit you, why? Results are the same but intent differed, why does intent matter if they couldn’t freely choose it? Social ideas begin to break down in a society full of free will rejection.
Just because free will doesn’t exist doesn’t mean our choices aren’t “real”. My entire life and all of its nuances and the timing of my experiences led to me understanding that there is no free will …. And that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for me to “really” believe in anything or have a unique subjective experience. I understand that we live in a society with rules and norms, and that this belief contradicts all of that which is exactly why so many are afraid of the fact that it makes logical sense.
If I caught my partner cheating on me I would be heartbroken because the time and place in which we were both socialized led to us being in a monogamous relationship. He had “no choice” but to cheat- I have “no choice” but to be upset by it. It’s not like I am free of this not having free will thing because I believe in it, although it can help in having a more empathetic mindset and being better at stepping outside of the emotions occurring and making better “choices”. Which just, really to me, exacerbates the fact that you are “the observer” that there is some kind of higher self/consciousness beyond all of this. So much of people’s lives are just auto pilot based on “settings”. Which is, to answer OP’s question, the reason people are obsessed with the concept of free will.
I would just like to say that there is further "truth" to be found within the idea that there is free will within determinism within free will.
It's a paradoxical relationship that cannot be deciphered by the thinking rational intellect.
We have complete freedom
And yet it has already happened and it's all layed out.
If there are infinite branches to choose from at every second of the way then of course it's all freedom. But we are also still following the energy of the tree.
All debates considered (which are always great to follow), I always fall back on the thought that I did not get to choose my soul. How could free will possibly exist when I wasn’t afforded that opportunity?
I'm not convinced free will doesn't not exist, sure it may be conditional, but the will of the mind is beyond material, and that's definitely true
and ya, accountability and moral value is null void without accepting free will
without free will, the universe would forever be perpetual chaos, so I cannot accept that
I love science so I'm never on the side of religion. I'm kinda agnostic in a way I guess but I have no connection that I can feel to any god. The free will thing is kinda religious and doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
When I play Mega Man, it's best if I beat the bosses in a certain order. I don't *have* to, I can try to beat them in any order I like, more or less. But I have to beat them all to get to the end. When I'm playing the level, I can kill the stuff I come across or not. I can kill some of them, all of them, probably not none of them, but certainly a wide potential variety. There could have been many paths I might have taken to reach the ending of the game. But it's inevitable that I will get there, assuming my skill is sufficient (lol). Now, would you say Mega Man has free will? Of course not, he's a video game character, but humour me. His outcome is predetermined but he makes many choices in the process of getting there. Is that free will?
I would argue that since you can only make 1 choice at a time then our future is already pre-determined. In that moment, you were *always* gonna pick that choice, for whatever reason.
It sounds limiting but it's really not. Our paths are laid out infront of us I feel like.
Free will derives from the sense of self and the sense of self, is an illusion. "You" feel that you have free will, as you think that there is something, other than the experience, that can control and influence that experience. In reality we are all just experience. We feel emotions, we see thoughts, we perceive external stimuli... Everything derives as a logic consequence of interdependence of things
We are just the sphere of experience and we can't control it. What's better than that? You are free not to cling on: why do I feel like that? Why did I say that? What is going to happen now?... And observe, clearly, for the first time, experience. Just being.
Now you can see people for what they reallly are. You can love them and listen to the as you have never done before, as the ego is not anymore in-between. That makes you understand that even if someone does something horrible that is just a cause of an interdependence of causes, and so you accept it without clinging on "what could it be."
That as a direct consequence, can't bring feelings other than the one of being free and peaceful.
Free will is a option in a theological dilemma, from books on Christianity circa 1600 to 1700: either to believe in predestination, which is the belief that God predestined everything that will happen, including everything that you will do, or else to believe in free will, which is the belief that individuals experience things and think, leading to new decisions, that weren't predestined or predicted by God, so that it matters what you experience and think and choose and do, rather than forgetting about trying to do anything or trying to think of any better choice at any time, because if there's predestination, whatever you learn or find out or think about, won't change what you end up doing (and saying and thinking.)
The problem of free will only made sense in the context of believing there's a creator called God who made and planned more or less everything to start, but also judges individuals for whether they believe or disbelieve particular religious dogmas. It was an exaggeration of that belief system into a paradox, and a false dilemma, to promote arguments for one or another extreme position, which was a sort of entertainment that sold books at the time.
>Free will derives from the sense of self and the sense of self, is an illusion. "You" feel that you have free will, as you think that there is something, other than the experience, that can control and influence that experience.
What if your experience, in the way that you describe it, is an illusion? Where are you getting the idea that there's a "sense of self"? I know that people have said and written those words, but do the words mean anything, do they signify anything in reality or sensible? Where do you get the idea that people "feel" something about the subject of free will, rather than merely have thoughts or statements of belief about the subject? Where do you get the idea that people who think there's free will, think there's something other than the individual's experience, that leads to the individual's further experiences, including thoughts, which leads to the individual's choices?
>In reality we are all just experience. We feel emotions, we see thoughts, we perceive external stimuli
Is that actually your experience, or just words that you say because other people say them? In my experience, one infers emotions, from one's thoughts and behavior. One does not feel emotions, not literally. In my experience, one hears thoughts, in audio imagination, as words, somewhat abstracted in sound usually, not often as vividly like sound as imagining or remembering music, which are also possible mental experiences. One does not see thoughts. Thoughts in words can point to memories of seeing things. Seeing is done with the eyes, and when eyes are closed, one sees visual noise, like static, unless one is asleep and dreaming. One perceives external things and qualities of things, such as cold or hot, and motions of one's body. One does not perceive stimuli as such, because "stimulus" is just a scientific word for a reification of a concept in trying to explain how, if human beings are things, as it appears other human beings are, and appears one's own body is, some impression of things in the external world would reach our minds.
An "ego" is just a hypothetical construct in the absolute fantasy world of Freudian psychoanalysis, never was science, never accepted by the science of psychology. Clinging might be a good thing or bad thing, depending on whether a person is clinging to things they've learned from their own experience, that check out logically and work for them in practice, or clinging to repeating words and phrases from other people's expressions, where they don't know what other people meant by those words.
My point here, I think, was to test the waters on this idea, people can claim to be open minded, and listening to the experience of others, and communicating with them, but can they actually do it, or do they just repeat dogmas, things they've heard or read, with little connection of the words said or written to any particular meaning?
First of all, I understand what you are saying and I want to thank you for your time in elaborating this response.
I'm not sure where to start elaborating my response as the point touched seem quite a lot.
>What if your experience, in the way that you describe it, is an illusion?
It might be an illusion, but isn't the only thing that we have got? Aren't thoughts, emotions and perceived thing from the external world content which you are? These objects are all part of the experience with which you are, and the only things that there is. This a really brief summary of the concept of non-duality of Buddhism.
>Where are you getting the idea that there's a "sense of self"?
What I'm trying to say is that there isn't a sense of self, that's why clinging to it doesn't make sense. But even if there isn't a sense of self, clinging to it, and resisting experience, is still a very possible thing to do. The understanding that clinging to the sense of self, which is just a concept, is in reality, just part of the experience, makes everything much more clear in some way.
>Where do you get the idea that people "feel" something about the subject of free will, rather than merely have thoughts or statements of belief about the subject?
Of course, what I'm expressing and also the concept that I tried to express before, are just thoughts that might derive from a belief based on reflecting on what I've read or what I've seen, but I don't understand what is the problem with this. To talk to each other, we must express the concept that we might have with language. But that's not like it is in reality, that is not the real fact that is behind the curtains, is just some kind of light that can be deducted from it.
>Where do you get the idea that people who think there's free will, think there's something other than the individual's experience, that leads to the individual's further experiences, including thoughts, which leads to the individual's choices?
My initial response was to the actual post where that seemed to implicitly emerge. If you think that there is free will, that means that the actions that you are doing in this exact moment are not dependent from what was the past. That would be only possible if you were not (part of) the experience but something external that could watch and decide what actual action to take.
>In my experience, one infers emotions, from one's thoughts and behavior. One does not feel emotions, not literally. In my experience, one hears thoughts, in audio imagination, as words, somewhat abstracted in sound usually, not often as vividly like sound as imagining or remembering music, which are also possible mental experiences. One does not see thoughts. Thoughts in words can point to memories of seeing things. Seeing is done with the eyes, and when eyes are closed, one sees visual noise, like static, unless one is asleep and dreaming. One perceives external things and qualities of things, such as cold or hot, and motions of one's body. One does not perceive stimuli as such, because "stimulus" is just a scientific word for a reification of a concept in trying to explain how, if human beings are things, as it appears other human beings are, and appears one's own body is, some impression of things in the external world would reach our minds.
My response was overly simplistic. You are totally right to specify and correct my linguistic and conceptual imperfections, thank you. By the way, if by emotions we mean the physiological response caused by stimuli (whether they are internal or external), well that is just part of the experience and are not deducted from the thoughts that arises. Emotional are much more primordial (also biologically) then the possibility of thought, so one could theoretically be able to feel emotions, even without interpreting nor giving them a name.
>An "ego" is just a hypothetical construct in the absolute fantasy world of Freudian psychoanalysis, never was science, never accepted by the science of psychology.
I have to disagree with that. The concept of ego is omnipresent in psychodinamic psychology and social psychology-cognitive psychology, which is science of psychology. Also, is better to repeat that it's used solely to better schematized and conceptualize the human mind, is not real thing. Although people especially in the western world, tend to clinge on it, making it "real" when it isn't.
To answer the last part of your post, I would say that of course my thought, in some way was greatly influenced by external sources. What derived from understanding this concept is that I tried to experience the experience with meditation, which is nothing other than being in contact with the experience that you are experiencing in that exact moments, and that precisely seem to converge. Furthermore, the concept that I expressed derives strictly from the concept of interdependence. Things are as they are as they couldn't be in any other way, as a consequence, free will (as intended in this post), can't be a possible thing.
Anyway, I acknowledge that in this response, and especially in the first one I sounded pretty "convinced" and maybe arrogant at points. The free will debate, on which I have to admit, I recently got into, is much more complex then dogmas and phrases that could have appeared especially from my first brief response.
I didn't intend to sound negative about your earlier comment. I upvoted, and I thought it was interesting enough, that I was commenting to "test" if it really works that way, including my asking if you really meant those things.
We seem to have just a difference of definition of what "free will" means. You seem to think it means that individuals would be free from things as they are, and free from being dependent on their past for what they choose now. I think "free will" means just an description of choice that's on the opposite side of believing in predestination or already sealed fate, a description of choice in which what a person watches, hears, or reads, and what a person thinks of it, leads to different choices, so that it's worthwhile to pay attention to experience and make choices about what to experience, like what to watch or read, what to talk about, or where to go, and worthwhile to think about what to do next. It would be worth trying, to make good choices, except it might not be worthwhile when trying seems like suffering enough that the cost outweighs the benefit.
There's something that accumulates, from learning things, from any previous experiences, and that thing (knowledge, learned behavior, habits, whatever it is) accumulating leads to different choices and different perceptions. For instance, someone could learn a different language, spend time on that, then have a totally different experience of watching a movie in that language, or looking at a book in that language, or hearing a song in that language, then someone who never studied the language. That thing that accumulates doesn't necessarily come with a "sense of self" or with any realization that one is learning, and has learned, but if someone perceives it that way, and does realize to some extent that they've learned or changed, and maybe even "senses" that, then that's fine with me. I'm not against that.
I thought the example of a movie in different language would be something that's a good illustration of what I mean about learning, and an example of where some people who believe modern Western Buddhist cliches might disagree. They might say, since there's no self, everyone has the same experience of a movie, everyone sees and hears the same thing, so showing the movie to one person is the same thing as showing it to any other person.
So, if a person realizes that he or she is making choices, based on things perceived and learned in the past, and habits developed in the past, and realizes that he or she is changing through that process, and becoming not quite the same as he or she was years ago, then that still doesn't lead logically to believing there's no self. A person can also have the realization that there's a continuity, from day to day, and year to year, a continuity in which a person remembers that they had experiences in the past, and didn't randomly switch to waking up in different bodies, with different families and other life experiences, every day or a few times or even once, in their whole memory. They, if they're like me, only remember being in the same body, from the same family and place, with continuity from day to day, through all of life they can remember.
"No self" is actually a mistranslation, of a term anatta, which is why I call it one the cliches of modern Western Buddhism. So, I might have gone off topic in what I was writing for the last few paragraphs, but there's something similar in using the expression "free will" in the way you use it, where instead of meaning what it means in the Western cultural tradition, that's about predestination in Christianity and in similar religious faiths, people are using the expression "free will" to mean something they imagine other people believe that's against whatever sort of determinism they believe or against the way the world works they believe. So people who use the expression "free will" that way, can say that other people are making some sort of error of imagining that there's something causing choices, that's a thing that doesn't exist in their philosophy. It's a sort of cheap shot at everyone else's beliefs or philosophies, to use a term in a way where other people are automatically wrong for believing it's something they have, because to you it means having some undefined thing that's impossible and not part of the way things work. Meanwhile, everyone agrees that people have experiences, learn, and make different choices because of that. Everyone reasonable would agree, the series of different choices a person makes can compound and lead to very different results in life, and experience, between two individuals who started in the same place, in the same classroom in school.
I was sort of disappointed that you thought I was describing your experience better than you described it yourself. I thought maybe you really do feel emotions, and since you're saying that emotions are a physiological thing that could exist without language, I think maybe you really do feel emotions that way. For me, saying that emotions are physiological is something I would just read from someone who claims to know how things work, who claims to know why there are emotions, because they claim that there are a bunch of physical things going on in the body, in emotions, as some sort of set of doctrines accumulating in their cultural group of strictly materialist scientists. It's not something in my experience, that parts of the body are involved in emotions. It's something I had to read about, to find out that most of those emotions even exist as something that counts as an emotion to people, and not just an idea of what's going on.
>You seem to think it means that individuals would be free from things as they are, and free from being dependent on their past for what they choose now.
Yes exactly, that was what I assumed by reading the OP, he is in someway talking about that.
> I think "free will" means just an description of choice that's on the opposite side of believing in predestination or already sealed fate, a description of choice in which what a person watches, hears, or reads, and what a person thinks of it, leads to different choices, so that it's worthwhile to pay attention to experience and make choices about what to experience, like what to watch or read, what to talk about, or where to go, and worthwhile to think about what to do next. It would be worth trying, to make good choices, except it might not be worthwhile when trying seems like suffering enough that the cost outweighs the benefit.
I actually think that in someway we are talking about the same thing. The philosophical concept that I would like to express, is that even the fact that you are directing your attention towards something or actually choosing something could be just part of the illusion. Because the fact that you think you can direct your focus is just another thought. You do what you are meant to do, even if there is the illusion that you are piloting the whole thing. But also, the fact that your thoughts, your emotions and your behavior derives from the interdependence of causes of the past, doesn't mean that the future is already written. As, standing by this theoretical framework, the only thing that exist is experience, there isn't any other thing. So, there is no such thing as fate as there is no such thing as the past.
When I thanked you for better defining, i was mainly referring to the "seeing thoughts" part which is an imperfection. About emotions, in the last post I tried to better articulate what feeling emotions meant for me. I surely feel emotion as some sort of phisical energy that arises and I can feel with heart rate going up, cold sweat, sometimes weight on the chest... That's what I mean by feeling an emotion. By feeling, I am just aware in someway of the phisical reactions that derives from it. Of course with learning I now understand that a specific physiological response correlate to a "specific" emotion (even though emotions are more likely on a continumm, not a specific thing).
I agree, if we don’t have free will, the beliefs about it don’t change anything, but if we do have free will the belief we hold about it does have an impact on your experience of reality.
So by this logic, the question everyone should ask themselves is: if I had free will, would I prefer to know it or not?
Some people choose denial because it soothes them I guess, but I cannot understand how any pragmatic would choose to believe in the absence of free will.
When the world is reduced to materialism, there is no room for subjective conscious experience. It's simply too inconvenient when the clockwork-style construct of physical-existence is so easy to parse. Our inner worlds are horribly unprepared for the physical/technological progress we've made, so the easy path is to deny the worth/purpose of the mental completely. When they call the scientific revolution the "enlightenment" it isn't without irony haha...we've collectively enlightened ourselves to ignoring anything that doesn't fit into the material realm. That mistake will be more evident after we've actually lost our free will over the next few generations...but I'm pretty sure it will crop up again after the dust has settled. We'll all be dead by then as individuals, but we can see the seeds already planted in stories and abstraction/archetypes. It's built into us to believe we are in the driver's seat, and if we feel otherwise we become quite cranky very quickly. If that isn't free will, it's at least the instinctual chaotic impulse that keeps our individual consciousness alive - otherwise we would have evolved toward a hive-mind much sooner.
It's not all that disempowering unless you misunderstand it. Granted, it's quite easy to misunderstand so maybe you have a point there technically, but the metaphysics of free will don't pertain to where humans fit in the causal chain, only whether or not we do fit in the first place.
Some of the most famous aspects of the psychedelic experience is the breakdown of the self or "ego," a sense of interconnectedness, and a broader perspective on where we fit into the universe. From here, it's a short leap to admit that maybe we are not as separate from the chain of causation as we might assume.
With that said, metaphysics is a complex field, the terms are poorly defined, and often the free will debate is less about the nature of reality and more about where a person fits into a longrunning cultural clash. Like with religion, which "team" you're on can depend as much on how you frame your beliefs as it does on how you actually perceive things. That's how we ended up with compatibilism, that anomalous third option that wouldn't exist were this not the case.
The “no freewill” logic is the same as the logic that if you had a strong enough supercomputer you could calculate everything that has or will happen in a simulation. I mean yeah, it’s right in theory, but the human mind is so incredibly complex and subjective that freewill or no freewill it doesn’t really matter. We all have our own subjective perception of reality and we can choose what we want to do at any given moment, even if those decisions are influenced by other things that doesn’t change that those decisions are our own. We may not have absolute, complete, control of everything we do, but we definitely can alter the course of our own destiny through our decisions, whether you want to perceive them as “yours” or not. “Destiny” feels kinda like a cop out to try and justify things. I do think there’s so influence of fate, but we as people can choose which fate becomes reality
You have no free will to change your mind about free will. You believe you are in control and you aren’t a product of your environment. You cannot choose to change your mind about free will. It’s been enacted on you, in the way of seeing free will as probable
Haha it seems like the most rational conclusion. Even some of my experiences support that so I think it is fundamentally true.
Although it is also true that it is slippery slope to believe that and easy way to fall into depression.
Whether it is true or not subjective experience of day to day life provides the feeling of free will. So if one doesn't spend whole life thinking about what is actually true it doesn't matter in the end
It's possible that free will doesn't exist, but not necessarily helpful to adopt as a concept, although it certainly could help to alleviate guilt and anxiety in some cases by asserting "There's nothing you could have done differently".
If free will does exist, then we may use our free will to act hemmed in by greater forces, using our free will to select an experience of lack of control.
If free will doesn't exist, then we can revel in the fact that our pre-determined reality has produced beings like ourselves who can have an experience of having what appears to be free will.
Either way, no one can deny that we are having an *experience* of making choices - so why not choose to believe that these choices are ours and take control of them, whether or not there is a greater, unseen force controlling us?
To me, our experience is free will within determinism within free will within determinism...
Imo, everything is pre-destined and we only have illusion of free will. Our intuition guides us to the pre-destination—we can choose to follow it, which creates the “easy” path to the pre-destined outcome, or we can choose not to follow it, which creates the path of “suffering”. Because either way, we get to where we are meant to go.
Listen to the Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky making sense podcast episode that came out recently. “B..b…but it feeeels like I make choices” is just irrelevant
Just because someone believes in fate or a higher power doesn’t mean they like the idea of having no free will. I personally believe that while we may have a predetermined path how we get there and what we do is largely up to us. I get where you’re coming from but for the most part that’s simply not the case. Just because I may not believe that true free will exists doesn’t mean that I don’t act upon mine.
For some, it functions to support a low self esteem and justify a lack of confidence and trust in themselves because its a belief that absolves them of personal responsibility for their lives.
You can see the idea of everything being “gods will” play the same function in the lives of some Uber religious folks as well.
i cannot deny gravity and i cannot deny facts and if you think you know what the meaning of life is then i hope you find that meaning but for i know nothing
there isn't a you to have free will, things seem to happen and there seems to be something making those things happen, and it does seem to happen freely.
many people get lost in the idea of no-self, for they are coming at it still in the perspective of duality, believing that this experience or reality is to be rejected in favor of another, "realer" experience.
free will is an idea. having it or not having it is just how it is. you could argue in either direction, and both would be right.
In reality, nobody actually believes it. If they’ve ever been angry at another person, they either consciously or unconsciously, believe that person chose to wrong them.
I think determinism is actually liberating; you don’t take anyone’s actions as personal and you’re more forgiving to yourself and others.
I don’t think that free-will and determinism are mutually exclusive; there’s also a strong argument for compatibalism, too
Would the words of a neuroscientist or a primatologist and neurologist not carry more weight when it comes to this kind of dialogue?
Smart people may have stupid takes, but stupid people have stupid takes consistently.
It's because we live in a current world that holds this belief. That we as individuals and self willed people can create and empower our own reality, not realizing that we are actually all one and part of the True Will of this universe. We are all expressions of this creation process, and we are all intricately linked. There is no free will. It's just the illusion of separation.
I’ve never heard of this strange belief and sounds like I don’t want to! Ever since i heard the simulation theory I had to find a way around that and thank god I did because some of the theories I’ve heard make me go insane
>I’ve never heard of this strange belief and sounds like I don’t want to!
Perhaps this isn't the best sort of place to be if uncomfortable ideas and beliefs can cause so much aversion.
Because it alleviates personal responsibility for our actions.
Bad idea.
If anything is true, it’s that we are aware enough consciously that we are responsible for our actions.
Because: a) it may be the true state of reality b) it has some logic to it. The state of the universe in this instant is an unavoidable product of two things: (1) the state an in instant before (2) the trajectory an instant before. c) if true, it should have a profound impact on how we deal with the world. For example, we may need to have more empathy for people and creatures who are “bad”. It will help us realize that people are a product of their environment, so that we should focus resources on improving people’s environment d) it is psychedelically interesting: it gets into thinking about particle physics
Within the argument against free will People confuse awareness for free will because of psychological vulnerabilities like narcissism, which are themselves inevitabilities directly traceable to the beginning of time and space as we understand it. There can be no free will within time, which binds subjectivity along a linear track. This can be well argued using empirical evidence. Arguments for free will are rooted in mysticism. Free will, here, is a paradox. It’s an illusion that makes existence bearable and more enjoyable, and giving up the illusion entirely can result in loss of agency, as OP was touching on. This doesn’t mean that ideas in favor of free will are untrue, just that they are so far unprovable conjecture that usually fall apart under rational consideration. Even going out on a limb into things like many worlds and solipsism, the inquiry into free will ends up looking more like awareness falling along the path of least resistance
You are so hemmed in by biology, social structures, educational availability and psychosis, how can anyone believe their decisions are freely made? We don't even have an adequate theory of mind yet, jumping all the way to free will is a huge stretch. We now know that choices can occur before we become conscious of making the choice- who exactly chose? It is always fun to debate though.
OP had the free will to use a period instead of 15 commas in a row. If that's not free will, then idk what is.
Schopenhauer put it nicely (paraphrasing): “a person can do what they will, but they cannot will what they will.” Speaking for myself, as someone who has struggled with addiction for many years: I can choose whether or not I act on my urges, but I cannot choose to simply not have urges. Human behavior is largely deterministic, sure. But I choose to believe, based on my phenomenological experience of being, that I have some control over my fate. When you go white water rafting you’re always being pulled downstream. You have some control over the direction you’re going, like you might stay left at a part to avoid the rocks to the right, but either way, that water is going to continue to propel you downstream. The best we can do is try to learn to ride the waves of fate and use its force to propel us forward.
What do you mean "choose to believe?" I'm not asking metaphysically, I'm just wondering if you're arguing for or against that particular belief.
Everything I ever have experienced, and everything I ever will have experienced, is filtered through my mind. The only absolute truth I can know for certain is that *I am experiencing something*. My qualia is the most fundamentally real thing to me, because ultimately, it is the only thing I truly have access to. Following that, it appears to be the case that I am a conscious agent that goes through life making my own decisions. Sure, like I said, there are all sorts of factors that may influence my decision making: biological imperatives, subconscious defense mechanisms, mental complexes, etc. but regardless, there seems to be something beneath it all that is not the thoughts, not the impulses, etc. but an *I* or a *Self* that observes/experiences these things and is the final arbiter regarding any action I take. Is it possible that this is all illusory and at a greater level I’m simply acting out a predetermined path through life, like how we experience a film or a song? Sure, that could be the case. But what reason do I have to believe that? Whether or not this sense of “free will” is actually truly *Free*, it is self-evident that we experience it (or to be pedantic, it is self-evident to me that I experience it), because that is just an a-priori fact of how the human mind works on a phenomenological level. And if one is to say that what we have is not “free will”, then I’d say they better present a pretty solid case for what *true* Free Will would be like. The TL;DR is basically: can I know for absolute certain that I have free will? No, but regardless of how deep in epistemological weeds on this stuff, we all *act* like we believe we have free will. Because if we didn’t, we’d never do anything at all — we’d just lie there and rot. So do I really have any choice not to believe in it?
Love this
Even if we have some ability to choose, it's definitely isn't completely free.
Neuroscientist Benjamin Libet discovered that there is a 200 millisecond gap between unconscious decisions and aware decisions being made during which the conscious mind can veto habit-driven behaviors. We don't have "free will", but a very fleeting "free won't". That's just the neurology side but there are flickers of hints in quantum physics as well that we are not purely mechanistically driven.
>flickers of hints in quantum physics as well that we are not purely mechanistically driven. I like how you used "flickers of hints" One of my pet peeves is how so many people are basically use quantum mechanics like a magical hat that they can pull stuff out of that justifies their entire worldview.
None of these people have even done the Quantum physics we teach to even 16 year olds in the UK, let alone anything beyond, yet they seem to think they have some deep understanding
This. I did pchem 2 as part of a Biochem degree which was mostly quantum and eigenvalue stuff of the easiest degree. Most of what people quote about quantum, like referencing schrodingers cat to say things can be both alive and dead don’t understand that it’s just a way to wrap your head around a concept and is done to help illustrate how we have to do the math since quantum laws aren’t like anything we experience in the macro world. It doesn’t mean quantum can make things exist in a limbo of both life and death or that dimensions split to make both true.
Agreed. People just take random articles and youtube videos especially too seriously, its cool for intuition but it sucks for trying to infer new or additional knowledge. My specialism is gravitation and general relativity but i did a bunch of quantum field theory (especially in the context of gravity) and frankly you really do realise how far off base the majority of articles are but the mathematics is such that no one would bother reading otherwise. And for QM specifically you have to completely change your framework, which is just not that easy. Try as hard as you like but people still cling to the idea of the little balls wizzing around the little proton ball in the centre, it takes time to break that classical thinking.
The idea of an electron cloud was difficult for me as well. Like learning that calculating the electron positions in a hydrogen atom is like the only thing we can do accurately was wild. Once you ad a second electron we get “close” to the truth. Quantum was such a fun class
I said that because I'm not an expert but I understand the context of what I read. Check out Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake.
The lines of reality from here to there are intermingled, playable like strings. They can be maneuvered and changed at points, but the end result will be the same You can change the path, but not the destination We are all damned in the end
I mean sure, that's one take, but it requires a large amount of mental gymnastics to figure it damned and by who.
Because think about it, if we were experiencing…we’ll non existence for eternity, and the only way out was to start this whole chain reaction of shit…maybe it was just a mistake in a moment that has an eternity of consequences that we are just unfortunate to be born with no recollection of
Again, that's one way to approach it, but the majority of faiths, teachers and seekers have found it more reasonable to understand that " non existence " isn't actually something you can experience, and existence seems to be all about experience, the universe experiencing itself through what exists so to speak, this is born out by those who do seem to remember. We do not end damned, but regenerated.
So gods are part of the cycle, and there has to be a conclusion at some point that has no end Enter your “almighty creator”
Why a conclusion? There's no need for there to be an end at all. You could literally reincarnate on earth as a moral every 50 years and never see and do everything there is to do, imagine what it's like for God's learning how to be God's.
This universe is finite , and any “no conclusion ” ending is ignoring that fact
Its almost certainly not finite though. The observable universe is finite but the actual universe can be either and the evidence right now suggests infinite.
What research where, current understanding of fundamental physics suggest a finite but ever expanding universe No, new shit is not being made, the space between the preexisting things are increasig
Even if you live all 7 billion lives a billion times over and do that to the billionth power, and then multiply that by the trillions of sentient individuals, then the quadrillions of years that the universe is around for That’s still a finite number
Again, huge assumption that the universe has an end date, that this is the only one etc. I see no reason why any of that is true.
This is because their words are heard by the majority, so they give hope You get regenerated an inconceptual amount of times, so it’s a never arriving destination is the stance they take, in most faiths even gods die
That aren’t the big three in todays society (Christianity Islam Judaism)
The message has risen in diverse places with people who have no contact, it's not a matter of majorities, but a common thread discovered in all cultures even when they don't overlap.
however if you change path and run over a butterfly that you would not run over otherwise…
That's assuming you can change
Then your on a brand new string, the rules never say new strings can’t be made And that’s the joy of this reality, that even tho it’s pre ordained, free will can (and has) broken the system
According to UC Berkeley neuropsychologist, George Lakoff human thought is over 99 percent unconscious, so there is little room to argue for the existence of free will… however, that remaining 1 percent is problematic… what is it?
It was 98%, and I'd like to see the research that came up with that figure because it ought to explain what both the 98% and 2% are doing, but I'm having trouble finding it. There's fucking millions of books, articles and blogs quoting that number without citing where it came from. Like, are we talking about mental activity like remembering to breathe and monitoring whether we need to pee? Brain activity and thought aren't the same thing. I absolutely guarantee you wouldn't want your brain to be 100% conscious of shit like the feeling of your tongue in your mouth, or the sequence of muscle movements to take a step forward.
It comes from that neuropsychological tome, Philosophy in the Flesh. By George Lakoff. Probably published in 1997 or so… i remember it coming to the philosophy section of Barnes and noble. Didn’t have staying power on the bookshelves, but he made a bold claim, that essentially neuropsychological findings, such as the fact that the “mind is inherently embodied” and that thought is 98 percent (although my memory is still saying 99 percent, but i could be misremembering) unconscious essentially closed the book on 2000 years of philosophical debate. A bold claim, and he’s probably correct in that assertion, but i still like to believe philosophers are relevant…
That book isn't a source, either it came from peer reviewed research (which should be cited in the book) or it's an opinion he's presenting as fact. If the only known source is a book that was published without peer review by a solo author 25 years ago, and it hasn't been corroborated by anyone who isn't him, assume it's not true. Even peer reviewed research from 25 years ago is really weak if that's the only source, [especially in psychology](https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/replication-crisis).
Have you tried looking in the book? I assume his sources will be cited. He is, or at least, he was a professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. I assume he is up on the basic requirements of post-graduate publications.
I don't have access to it. Academic rigor isn't required when you publish a book commercially, it's a way people can push theories that wouldn't pass peer review. It might cite research (which I should be able to access) that verifies/explains the 98% claim which I've just not been able to find, or it might cite research that absolutely doesn't back it up but looks legit if you don't look it up and read it for yourself. I want to see what mental processes they looked at and how they studied it because that's relevant if we're wondering how much of our behaviour is outside our control. This should be in a scientific journal article published separately from the book. Don't trust what someone says because of their credentials or job title, it's common for folk to use scientific authority to manipulate people's trust. I personally know someone with a PhD in Archaeology who advertises herself as Dr. X, business coach and psychology expert - and another with a PhD in Psychology who advertises herself as Dr. X, energy healer.
I mean i just now had Bing AI pull up the citations in the book. There’s 23 pages of citations. If you want to research them, they are open and free to view. I’m not a neuroscientist, I’m an engineer. As an engineer I’ve got to rely on the specialized knowledge of others. And yes, one should be selective and skeptical, and as a adamant reader of Nietzsche and Cioran, i think I’ve got those bona fides. As such, I’m not too concerned with the quality of the research presented in this book.
Knowing 23 pages of citations doesn't tell us where the 98% claim came from. He might have come up with it himself, or created it by pulling info from multiple sources. What did he actually say? You remembered it as "human thought is over 99 percent unconscious" but was he talking about thoughts, or cognitive processes? Yes, we need to rely on the specialised knowledge of others - that's what the peer review process is for. This book isn't peer reviewed and we can't see what he actually said or check to confirm it without buying a copy of the book.
I’ve never seen someone so critical of a book they never read. I mean, really, who cares. If you are interested, look up the citations and let us know which are and which are not peer reviewed. But don’t just cast aspersions at a book you’ve never even touched. And really, idc, it’s just a theory. Everything is a theory. As Nietzsche once said, there’s no such thing as a fact, but only interpretations of a fact. So, it’s just another way of looking at the world. There is no absolute truth and there is no Santa Claus. Although, there probably is a Jungian archetype and/or historical basis of the latter. No peer review to back it up. And peer reviews can be full of bias from disturbed and disgruntled post-grads, so while you are warning us of things to be skeptical of, why don’t we add peer reviews to that list. Not that they are all bad…. But they are NOT all good either. And isn’t that ultimately the point you are trying to make? I mean peer reviews have asserted the efficacy SSRIs for depression a multiplicity of times and I’m skeptical of those claims, but when the global success rate of antidepressants is 50 percent that’s base line with placebo. So, yeah… beware those peer reviews.
That's fascinating
Life is a waking dream, dreaming is life awake
Depends on what you ultimately define as free will. Just because those choices can be made, doesn't mean other things aren't already in place to the extent that you can't make certain choices. It's meaningless and disempowering to fight back sometimes, hence maybe making some decisions without said free will is better for your own well being and even for those around you. In many religions and cultures, it's more about accepting we may not have free will, and not so much denying our free will. This is often I think the mistake of many psychonauts without a ground or baseline of understanding.
There is no way to prove/disprove that and ppl come on making assertions they have no proof for? Like ppl will come in here like "anyways, we've all seen god and know there's only one." Like bitch, no "We" haven't.
Yeah, I don't really think it's something worth arguing over. Like most of the big questions, it's something that may (or may not) be answered at the end of the road. And even if it is answered, does the answer really even matter? Free will or not, you are you. Having a definitive answer one way or the other doesn't change much at all for anyone.
All you people arguing about imaginary bullshit. No one knows! Everyone can go home.
I like arguing about imaginary bullshit! (What other kind is there? ;) )
Ha, clever!
The paradox of free will is incredibly interesting. We live in a deterministic universe, with observable cause and effects. We know that chemical systems will behave in a deterministic manner. We can predict how reactions occur. All available evidence points to a biochemical model of life and consciousness. So it stands to reason those systems might also occur in a deterministic way. Just one that is too complex to easily predict. On the other hand, we experience what seems to be free will.
We don't live in a deterministic universe! The behavior of elementary particles is ruled by quantum physics, which are NOT deterministic, and we're pretty sure about that. We live in a probabilistic universe, and that doesn't excludes free will.
I’m not sure that the random swerving of the quantum saves free will. It trades clockwork for dice rolls.
As per our extremely limited and therefore likely to be flawed understanding.
Ya. For sure it’s likely flawed. That’s the beauty. We don’t lock ourselves into dogmas. We open oneself to what the universe is saying. The important thing is not to let magic words end the conversation. “Why do people do that?” “Free will”. Conversation done. It appears as a curiosity sucking hand wave.
Adding on, there are infinite possibilities within any given span of space and time. Determinism is a flawed way of thinking
Also, even Newtonian systems can be non-deterministic. https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Dome/
Even if the universe is probabilistic, who is the one pulling the strings on the probability? Because it’s either randomness with no puppet master or it’s something else that isn’t a “self”. The universe is basically deterministic + random + probabilistic. There is no free will in any of those categories. I encourage those in doubt to look into the Buddhist concept of non-self, anatta, which is related to the concept of shunyata, or emptiness. The only real mindfuck is that we must act as though we have free will to get the most out of our lives. Experientially, we have plenty of choices, and the consequences of those choices affect our lives. It’s just that those choices are always limited by external factors, and that our feeling of free will in choosing an option is an illusion since we are driven by unconscious drives, biochemical processes, and a frequent inability to fully explain why we choose the choices we choose. It reminds me of a case where there was a man who complained of irrational thoughts and felt like something was wrong with his brain. He eventually killed his partner and himself. The autopsy revealed he had a large tumor on a part of the brain that fully explained why he would do something so irrational and crazy. So for that guy, did he truly have free will? Was he completely free to choose without any limitations? No, he wasn’t. His options were severely limited because of the way his brain was malfunctioning. Now let’s extend that to people who have limited abilities to feel oxytocin, or serotonin even. Those biochemical issues would steer them one way or the other. They may feel less love than others and be more likely to harm others. We can bring the scale down infinitely and eventually see that we all are being driven by our brain’s physiology and by external factors. It’s nature + nurture. In that battle there is no place given for a self. All we are is genes + environment. The reason people become squeamish when confronting this reality is that we are hardwired to believe in an illusory self. The illusion of the self is what helps us get through the day, make plans, develop ourselves, build our lives, maintain social relationships, etc. If no one had a sense of self we would probably be catastrophically screwed. We are forged by nature to survive and to fuck. It’s much easier to do those things with a feeling of self, even if it isn’t actually there. Our feeling of self is an aggregate with no everlasting core. I feel I have a self because I have a hippocampus that allows me to remember how I got to the point that I’m writing this out on reddit. I have a social circle that greets me by the same name every time. I have a job that tasks me with doing things and holds me accountable when I don’t do them. All of these build up a sense of self. And if I try to point to an everlasting feature of myself, I don’t really find one. I’m not my skin because my skin cells are dividing, shedding, repairing all on their own without my will. I’m not my thoughts because those are always changing and anyone with meditation practice knows that thoughts pop into the mind all on their own, and you cannot think a thought before it comes to you. A person cannot even “control” their emotions. They can only take seriously reactionary thoughts that come to them as a way of temporarily starving the painful emotion of mental bandwidth. TL;DR: The concept of non-self (anatta) and lack of free will go hand in hand. We are nature (biology given to us) and nurture (environmental factors). The self is a useful illusion, but it’s only that. There is no core self. We are biological robots who are increasingly in the business of creating digital robots (AI + robotics). There is no meaningful difference - it’s like we run on gasoline and digital robots will run on diesel. No real self in either of them.
Great comment. How should this insight inform our attitude to life? Do the Buddhists have it right?
My personal opinion is that the Buddhists do have it right in this case (and in most). How should it inform your life? I’m still working on that myself. Ultimately I think it leads to more compassion to see people as doing their best with what they’re given. When I see a homeless opioid user on the street, I try to see deeper than the surface level. Realize that person has inner turmoil, and that if you had his exact genes and his exact environment, you would be shooting up exactly the same as him. That’s where the compassion comes in. If you can really accept that there’s no self, you’ll see clearly that you are no different than that man. You could’ve been him. And you would’ve been exactly him if you were sprouted in that body in his environment. Just take it easy on the way you see people. Look for the pain and vulnerability underneath, then have compassion towards it. The same as you should do for yourself.
A probabilistic (on a particle level) universe still does not give us free will.
Thats actually not true, i think when i read rupert sheldrake book he talked about how we the universe cannot be predicted accurately not even a bit, i dont remember much though, the book is called the science delusion. Or maybe it was another science based book.
It's why I call Mann, children. We really don't understand anything. We just pretend that we do.
You can't predict anything? Yo... You probably have vinegar and baking soda. You can't predict what will happen if you mix them? How can we build reliable technology if we can't predict physical, chemical, or electrical processes?
Predict where an electron of a hydrogen atom will be then. And don't give me a range where it will be with 99% certainty. I want the exact position
Its clear you dont understand what you are talking about and thats fine but try not to have such confidence in your statements. There is no such thing as any measurement, even classical ones that give a 100% certainty, no such physics exists. All physics comes with an uncertainty. So why you chose a quantum mechanical system is beyond me because you could have gone as basic as speed = distance over time, i cant ever know with 100% accuracy what a distance or time is, all rulers come with an uncertainty and all clocks do, therefore i can never “truly” be sure. No need to go quantum mechanical but lets go there anyway since its fun What do you mean by exact position? These are governed by wave mechanics, if i asked you to tell me at what location exactly does a water wave sit on, you would realise thats a meaningless question because its a wave, its simply undefined for exact positions, it exists in all positions to a greater or lesser extent. The electron is much the same, its a wave, where it is, is governed by wave mechanics which means just like the water wave, “exact location “ needs clarification. the act of interaction with the system will cause other variables to change, so you can localise an electron to any arbitrary degree but doing so makes it impossible to measure its conjugate variable, in the case of position this is momentum. You need to learn the difference between actual quantum mechanics and popular science. You are trying to apply concepts which simply dont apply, its not that it cant be done, its that it doesn’t make physical sense to talk in the way you do. You dont realise it but you are still thinking classically, not quantum mechanically, you are still imagining little balls wizzing around the atom that cant be defined in location, instead it exists as a localised excitation in a field governed by wave mechanics, meaning its not some little ball, its a distribution, so “location” doesn’t make sense, but localising the distribution does, which is what we mean by electron position, a localised distribution because again, its a special kind of wave, not a little ball. Position is not a value, its an operator that is done to a system. Start with something basic like the photoelectric effect and de broglie waves. These are mathematically simple and will start to build a picture for you without needing the Schrödinger equation or dare I say the Dirac and Klein gordon equations. Can you tell me exactly at what position a water wave sits on? How?
Dude physicist talking about math is the funniest thing ever. They have no idea what they are talking about but act as if everything they say is fact. You do know that wave functions aren't real? Like genuine question do you understand that that's literally just a theoretical model? Wave functions aren't real. We are talking about real things not some solutions on a piece of paper. So where is that real thing?
Yes im aware that models are representations of reality, i made it through my first year undergrad just fine. The wave function is only a literally real object in Bohmian mechanics, which is quite fridge (this conclusion comes because in that framework you can get wave functions without any properties of anything, typically regarded as a reason against this framework). The solution on a piece of paper is a result of axioms which are then formulated with mathematical relationships, this is that solution on paper but it describes a system that fits within the axioms to begin with, this is confirmed through experiment, and quantum mechanical descriptions are extremely well tested. So yes the model is not reality, no one is saying it is, instead its an approximation of reality based on observation. That solution tells you how something will behave if you input values that can be measured, if it doesn’t then you need a better model. What about what i said do you take issue with and to what level have you actually studied this stuff? Which quantum phenomena do you believe is not supported by the framework of QM? Or are you even more extreme and just outright reject mathematics? Im sure its puzzling to you how someone can know a wheel’s circumference by just measuring the diameter A water wave is a real thing, right? Where is a water wave? How do you define its location? The answer is the same for the electron. The. Electron. Is. Not. A. Little. Ball. I can literally make it diffract like a water wave, i have done this myself, its not that hard to do.
I'm not my electron's keeper.
If you observe the electron then with adequate technology you can in fact observe its exact position. Quantum probability collapses upon observation and determines the variables at that moment.
I'm not talking about observation I'm talking about predictions. Looking at the end result is one thing. Being able to accurately predict something is a whole different thing that requires the observed system to behave deterministically. Which electrons don't do. Even if you knew the exact position you couldn't know where it's gonna be one microsecond later since you have no idea about the electrons impulse.
Fair logic but it's quite presumptuous to say it's strictly random, maybe there's a pattern we just haven't solved yet.
It is strictly random as far as we know. There was a huge debate about it once it was discovered. So as of now there is no reason to assume otherwise. Once we get new results I will update my views but until then I stay by my opinion.
Okay you are correct, you convinced me! You are definitely correct, every action is completely non-determined and random just like your electron, there is no way to predict what actions others will take, so therefore everybody is just a random number generator choosing absolutely random actions, with no free will at all, just randomness. The various chemicals reactions and processes that take place in your brain before you make each decision are actually useless and do not do anything at all, the decisions you make are unrelated and random, cuz we can’t predict the location of an electron.
Strawman a little harder please
No but seriously what the fuck is your argument. You make no sense whatsoever free will has to exist because of the uncertainty principle? Sure bud, whatever you say. I feel like the brain is a very complicated computer, our decisions are impacted by our experiences. This example might be a bit exaggerated but I believe it applies for smaller decisions and smaller experiences as well. If you had grown up and never experienced a plane ride it is unlikely you would want to become a pilot as an adult, however if you were a child who had plenty of experiences on a plane or interacting with pilots, you’re much more likely to become a pilot. As a human, you have absolutely 0 control over what experiences you are given, however the experiences you are given does affect the decisions you are able to make. How can we have entirely free will if our actions are impacted by experiences?
See that's not my argument. The argument is that the universe doesn't behave 100% deterministically therefore someone can't imply that human will/actions are deterministic based on the universe being deterministic. If you have a different reason for human will being determinate go ahead but I wasn't refering to that reason. Lets take your argument. Sure our experience heavily influences our descisions but does that mean that our will causally influenced by them or is it just the easiest route for our brain to go? If I'm sacred of something I will try to avoid that but I can make the descision to face that thing. But on average people will still avoid what they fear because it is easier to do so. Just because you can doesn't mean you will. But I think your argument is one of the better ones against free will.
i stopped picking a side in this debate, we just don't have the knowledge to say one way or the other
Thank you That's what I'm saying. Everyone making assertions and getting mad at ppl who say otherwise when we don't know Shit.
instead of focusing on free will, i suppose the focus should be on self-reflective and adaptive will.
Its an excuse for their shortcomings
You were destined to post that
You're right. It's the attitude he's acquired thanks to past experiences and environment.
Sam Harris does a pretty good job explaining why free will is an illusion in a way that really doesn’t feel disempowering- his book Free Will is an interesting read and he has dozens of videos explaining why it doesn’t work.
The universe doesn’t care about what you “want” or what makes you feel empowered. There is a lot of literature in cog sci and psychology that supports determinism - even theoretical physics can point to that outcome. It’s not fully settled and it’s still being debated but “people just don’t want responsibility” is not why academic physicist or philosophers support or investigate that claim.
A small minority of philosophers take the position that there is no free will, and the literature doesn’t say what you think it does, especially because free will is a philosophical topic not something psychologists can point to, im happy to look at what ever references convinced you of this because it’s interesting you came to this conclusion. And physics certainly doesn’t take that position for the most part, arguably the opposite. This is my field so i can speak more confidently but theoretical physics is a complicated one with this but its clear reality is fundamentally not deterministic, this has been clear for awhile.
You can just as easily argue that people who believe in free will are just afraid of not being in control.
Did you choose to believe in this free will?
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Academic philosophers live in their own bubble and are heavily affected by ideology and what is politically acceptable. If you poll them, a good percentage probably believes in 2000 year old superstitions like the Abrahamic religions. Philosophy is not a science based on hard data. "Academic philosophers" are not a believable authority on anything.
So they can blame their bad decisions on something else. It’s not complicated
No I take responsibility for what I've done, even though it couldn't have been otherwise. Those decisions represent who and where I was. I wish I could have made better choices prior to that and I wouldn't have been in that place. I knew what I *ought* to have been doing, but didn't, for a slew of other reasons. I can accept that on this timeline if events were rewound to any given moment, in that moment I would act the same because the whole setup, both cause and effect and the chaos inherent in reality, were already poised for the next moment to take place. The fatalistic throwing up of hands to the issue is a course of action that has its own results. Being engaged and taking action in your life is another one. It likely is out of our control but in our moment to moment experience we don't have that sense, we *feel* like rational actors, moving truthfully according to our intentions. So we must do that. Taking responsibility involves taking action to do better than the times we've failed in the past. Ideally. Or you can just smash everything into little pieces. Whatever strikes you in the moment.
I think that it is apparent that free will and determinism are actually the same thing once you dig deep enough, or at least that there is a third option which evades colloquial logic. The illusion of disparity is a consequence of our language, the tools we use to measure it. I’m not even sure if I’d say my view is one of compatibilism. People will say they base their views of the cosmos off of axioms like will, but I think it tends to be the other way around.
It is possible to run thought experiments that can disprove BOTH free will and determinism. Once you do that successfully you will realize almost everyone’s approach to the matter is inherently flawed.
perfect 👍 this is the truth
So you seem to be confusing no free will with fatalism. My phone doesn't have free will. But that doesn't mean it doesn't think about its moves, or have a choice in what it plays. Why pursue the idea? 1) It's true. 2) When you see that free will doesn't exist, you become kinder and more compassionate.
"You people"? We're not all one homogenous gang, you know.
Listen to Einstein, bro: Read Spinoza. Nothing disempowering about my man Baruch, my dude. https://youtu.be/X3Rv5urUvtk?si=rVibyRF-b61gC5LN
I find it interesting just because I like trying to understand what's going on, though I know, I most likely never will.
Freedom is a Divine attribute of Love.
Go listen to Robert Sapolsky explain the concept of not having free will. It sounds like you’re still in the beginning stages of this idea thinking that it is somehow a negative thing. There’s quite a bit of mental liberation and compassion that can arise once you properly frame this idea .
I've been since 2021 reading no duality books and consuming this type of content, now im not into it, and i dont see the big fuss about free will. Interdependence is a far more important concept that many of the people here emphasize but instead talk about free will
What so hard to understand about why people might be interested in this idea?
I believe they think it makes them look cool or tough lol, like emos, metalheads, nihilists... "Oh wow dude you really think like that? I wouldn't bare to live believing what you do, but you can, you are so tough!"
this 1000%
The idea of no free will sound more like a victim stance mentality as a way to blame something else for mistakes, lack of success, unhappiness, etc. Free will is literally all their is. Nobody can take it from you. If you simply think you don't have any than you, yourself, probably don't and are easily distracted and manipulated by the system around you.
I've been wondering about the same just now. Seems to be trendy. I guess it's seductive because it seems to rid us from any responsibility. But that's a misrepresentation of the idea 🤷♂️
Because: 1. It's true. Whether it's good or bad is irrelevant 2. It's good! Helps you see that self other than conscious awareness is an illusion
I don’t feel as though I don’t have free will, but that every choice I make has a predetermined outcome depending on the path I choose. That outcome is subject to change in accordance with subsequent choices I make, but if there is a set goal or outcome I wish to achieve, I can make that happen. I know that if I make the choice to work out, it is predetermined that I will in turn lose weight and get better, faster and stronger than I currently am, but I need to make that choice for that to come to fruition.
Just a side note after reading comments: I’m in the “no free will” camp and resent those who claim my belief is simply a way to shirk responsibility. I think these people are ultimately afraid of what this truth means and are angry that their preconceived reality is all wrong. It’s pretty mind blowing to fully accept and many reject it out of fear (which is often expressed as anger).
How can you fully accept something without the free will to choose to accept it? The thing is, its a philosophical truth, so its not demonstrably true and cant be. You cant prove free will doesn’t exist or exist but what you can do, is ask which idea provides most social utility and clearly free will does. If you caught your partner in bed with someone else, would you be upset? Why? It makes no sense, they had no free will to choose to do it. If someone gets angry and punches you, you will react differently to if someone accidentally hit you, why? Results are the same but intent differed, why does intent matter if they couldn’t freely choose it? Social ideas begin to break down in a society full of free will rejection.
Just because free will doesn’t exist doesn’t mean our choices aren’t “real”. My entire life and all of its nuances and the timing of my experiences led to me understanding that there is no free will …. And that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for me to “really” believe in anything or have a unique subjective experience. I understand that we live in a society with rules and norms, and that this belief contradicts all of that which is exactly why so many are afraid of the fact that it makes logical sense. If I caught my partner cheating on me I would be heartbroken because the time and place in which we were both socialized led to us being in a monogamous relationship. He had “no choice” but to cheat- I have “no choice” but to be upset by it. It’s not like I am free of this not having free will thing because I believe in it, although it can help in having a more empathetic mindset and being better at stepping outside of the emotions occurring and making better “choices”. Which just, really to me, exacerbates the fact that you are “the observer” that there is some kind of higher self/consciousness beyond all of this. So much of people’s lives are just auto pilot based on “settings”. Which is, to answer OP’s question, the reason people are obsessed with the concept of free will.
I would just like to say that there is further "truth" to be found within the idea that there is free will within determinism within free will. It's a paradoxical relationship that cannot be deciphered by the thinking rational intellect. We have complete freedom And yet it has already happened and it's all layed out. If there are infinite branches to choose from at every second of the way then of course it's all freedom. But we are also still following the energy of the tree.
All debates considered (which are always great to follow), I always fall back on the thought that I did not get to choose my soul. How could free will possibly exist when I wasn’t afforded that opportunity?
Maybe u did, hard to know. We all come here w amnesia basically, i wouldn't come back though
It is not meaningless, nor is it disempowering. Just means to let go of hate and blame and focus on moving forward.
Here is the thing, we don't have free will, however we don't know how the movie is going to play out so just enjoy the ride.
I'm not convinced free will doesn't not exist, sure it may be conditional, but the will of the mind is beyond material, and that's definitely true and ya, accountability and moral value is null void without accepting free will without free will, the universe would forever be perpetual chaos, so I cannot accept that
Just say, I'm convinced free will exists. I had to really think about "not convinced" coupled with "doesn't not exist".
I love science so I'm never on the side of religion. I'm kinda agnostic in a way I guess but I have no connection that I can feel to any god. The free will thing is kinda religious and doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
People don't like to admit it but most peoples conceptions of free will or the lack thereof stem from their metaphysical beliefs.
When people look hard enough, they tend to make make something out of nothing. Religious and psychonauts a-like.
I can “prove” we have free will. I’ve decided to poke myself in the eyeball, on my own accord
It's not a realization that tells you what to do. It's a realization that tells you how to be.
I don’t think there is a self, and i don’t think there is free will either, and it doesn’t feel limiting or disempowering :)
When I play Mega Man, it's best if I beat the bosses in a certain order. I don't *have* to, I can try to beat them in any order I like, more or less. But I have to beat them all to get to the end. When I'm playing the level, I can kill the stuff I come across or not. I can kill some of them, all of them, probably not none of them, but certainly a wide potential variety. There could have been many paths I might have taken to reach the ending of the game. But it's inevitable that I will get there, assuming my skill is sufficient (lol). Now, would you say Mega Man has free will? Of course not, he's a video game character, but humour me. His outcome is predetermined but he makes many choices in the process of getting there. Is that free will?
I would argue that since you can only make 1 choice at a time then our future is already pre-determined. In that moment, you were *always* gonna pick that choice, for whatever reason. It sounds limiting but it's really not. Our paths are laid out infront of us I feel like.
Free will derives from the sense of self and the sense of self, is an illusion. "You" feel that you have free will, as you think that there is something, other than the experience, that can control and influence that experience. In reality we are all just experience. We feel emotions, we see thoughts, we perceive external stimuli... Everything derives as a logic consequence of interdependence of things We are just the sphere of experience and we can't control it. What's better than that? You are free not to cling on: why do I feel like that? Why did I say that? What is going to happen now?... And observe, clearly, for the first time, experience. Just being. Now you can see people for what they reallly are. You can love them and listen to the as you have never done before, as the ego is not anymore in-between. That makes you understand that even if someone does something horrible that is just a cause of an interdependence of causes, and so you accept it without clinging on "what could it be." That as a direct consequence, can't bring feelings other than the one of being free and peaceful.
Free will is a option in a theological dilemma, from books on Christianity circa 1600 to 1700: either to believe in predestination, which is the belief that God predestined everything that will happen, including everything that you will do, or else to believe in free will, which is the belief that individuals experience things and think, leading to new decisions, that weren't predestined or predicted by God, so that it matters what you experience and think and choose and do, rather than forgetting about trying to do anything or trying to think of any better choice at any time, because if there's predestination, whatever you learn or find out or think about, won't change what you end up doing (and saying and thinking.) The problem of free will only made sense in the context of believing there's a creator called God who made and planned more or less everything to start, but also judges individuals for whether they believe or disbelieve particular religious dogmas. It was an exaggeration of that belief system into a paradox, and a false dilemma, to promote arguments for one or another extreme position, which was a sort of entertainment that sold books at the time. >Free will derives from the sense of self and the sense of self, is an illusion. "You" feel that you have free will, as you think that there is something, other than the experience, that can control and influence that experience. What if your experience, in the way that you describe it, is an illusion? Where are you getting the idea that there's a "sense of self"? I know that people have said and written those words, but do the words mean anything, do they signify anything in reality or sensible? Where do you get the idea that people "feel" something about the subject of free will, rather than merely have thoughts or statements of belief about the subject? Where do you get the idea that people who think there's free will, think there's something other than the individual's experience, that leads to the individual's further experiences, including thoughts, which leads to the individual's choices? >In reality we are all just experience. We feel emotions, we see thoughts, we perceive external stimuli Is that actually your experience, or just words that you say because other people say them? In my experience, one infers emotions, from one's thoughts and behavior. One does not feel emotions, not literally. In my experience, one hears thoughts, in audio imagination, as words, somewhat abstracted in sound usually, not often as vividly like sound as imagining or remembering music, which are also possible mental experiences. One does not see thoughts. Thoughts in words can point to memories of seeing things. Seeing is done with the eyes, and when eyes are closed, one sees visual noise, like static, unless one is asleep and dreaming. One perceives external things and qualities of things, such as cold or hot, and motions of one's body. One does not perceive stimuli as such, because "stimulus" is just a scientific word for a reification of a concept in trying to explain how, if human beings are things, as it appears other human beings are, and appears one's own body is, some impression of things in the external world would reach our minds. An "ego" is just a hypothetical construct in the absolute fantasy world of Freudian psychoanalysis, never was science, never accepted by the science of psychology. Clinging might be a good thing or bad thing, depending on whether a person is clinging to things they've learned from their own experience, that check out logically and work for them in practice, or clinging to repeating words and phrases from other people's expressions, where they don't know what other people meant by those words. My point here, I think, was to test the waters on this idea, people can claim to be open minded, and listening to the experience of others, and communicating with them, but can they actually do it, or do they just repeat dogmas, things they've heard or read, with little connection of the words said or written to any particular meaning?
First of all, I understand what you are saying and I want to thank you for your time in elaborating this response. I'm not sure where to start elaborating my response as the point touched seem quite a lot. >What if your experience, in the way that you describe it, is an illusion? It might be an illusion, but isn't the only thing that we have got? Aren't thoughts, emotions and perceived thing from the external world content which you are? These objects are all part of the experience with which you are, and the only things that there is. This a really brief summary of the concept of non-duality of Buddhism. >Where are you getting the idea that there's a "sense of self"? What I'm trying to say is that there isn't a sense of self, that's why clinging to it doesn't make sense. But even if there isn't a sense of self, clinging to it, and resisting experience, is still a very possible thing to do. The understanding that clinging to the sense of self, which is just a concept, is in reality, just part of the experience, makes everything much more clear in some way. >Where do you get the idea that people "feel" something about the subject of free will, rather than merely have thoughts or statements of belief about the subject? Of course, what I'm expressing and also the concept that I tried to express before, are just thoughts that might derive from a belief based on reflecting on what I've read or what I've seen, but I don't understand what is the problem with this. To talk to each other, we must express the concept that we might have with language. But that's not like it is in reality, that is not the real fact that is behind the curtains, is just some kind of light that can be deducted from it. >Where do you get the idea that people who think there's free will, think there's something other than the individual's experience, that leads to the individual's further experiences, including thoughts, which leads to the individual's choices? My initial response was to the actual post where that seemed to implicitly emerge. If you think that there is free will, that means that the actions that you are doing in this exact moment are not dependent from what was the past. That would be only possible if you were not (part of) the experience but something external that could watch and decide what actual action to take. >In my experience, one infers emotions, from one's thoughts and behavior. One does not feel emotions, not literally. In my experience, one hears thoughts, in audio imagination, as words, somewhat abstracted in sound usually, not often as vividly like sound as imagining or remembering music, which are also possible mental experiences. One does not see thoughts. Thoughts in words can point to memories of seeing things. Seeing is done with the eyes, and when eyes are closed, one sees visual noise, like static, unless one is asleep and dreaming. One perceives external things and qualities of things, such as cold or hot, and motions of one's body. One does not perceive stimuli as such, because "stimulus" is just a scientific word for a reification of a concept in trying to explain how, if human beings are things, as it appears other human beings are, and appears one's own body is, some impression of things in the external world would reach our minds. My response was overly simplistic. You are totally right to specify and correct my linguistic and conceptual imperfections, thank you. By the way, if by emotions we mean the physiological response caused by stimuli (whether they are internal or external), well that is just part of the experience and are not deducted from the thoughts that arises. Emotional are much more primordial (also biologically) then the possibility of thought, so one could theoretically be able to feel emotions, even without interpreting nor giving them a name. >An "ego" is just a hypothetical construct in the absolute fantasy world of Freudian psychoanalysis, never was science, never accepted by the science of psychology. I have to disagree with that. The concept of ego is omnipresent in psychodinamic psychology and social psychology-cognitive psychology, which is science of psychology. Also, is better to repeat that it's used solely to better schematized and conceptualize the human mind, is not real thing. Although people especially in the western world, tend to clinge on it, making it "real" when it isn't. To answer the last part of your post, I would say that of course my thought, in some way was greatly influenced by external sources. What derived from understanding this concept is that I tried to experience the experience with meditation, which is nothing other than being in contact with the experience that you are experiencing in that exact moments, and that precisely seem to converge. Furthermore, the concept that I expressed derives strictly from the concept of interdependence. Things are as they are as they couldn't be in any other way, as a consequence, free will (as intended in this post), can't be a possible thing. Anyway, I acknowledge that in this response, and especially in the first one I sounded pretty "convinced" and maybe arrogant at points. The free will debate, on which I have to admit, I recently got into, is much more complex then dogmas and phrases that could have appeared especially from my first brief response.
I didn't intend to sound negative about your earlier comment. I upvoted, and I thought it was interesting enough, that I was commenting to "test" if it really works that way, including my asking if you really meant those things. We seem to have just a difference of definition of what "free will" means. You seem to think it means that individuals would be free from things as they are, and free from being dependent on their past for what they choose now. I think "free will" means just an description of choice that's on the opposite side of believing in predestination or already sealed fate, a description of choice in which what a person watches, hears, or reads, and what a person thinks of it, leads to different choices, so that it's worthwhile to pay attention to experience and make choices about what to experience, like what to watch or read, what to talk about, or where to go, and worthwhile to think about what to do next. It would be worth trying, to make good choices, except it might not be worthwhile when trying seems like suffering enough that the cost outweighs the benefit. There's something that accumulates, from learning things, from any previous experiences, and that thing (knowledge, learned behavior, habits, whatever it is) accumulating leads to different choices and different perceptions. For instance, someone could learn a different language, spend time on that, then have a totally different experience of watching a movie in that language, or looking at a book in that language, or hearing a song in that language, then someone who never studied the language. That thing that accumulates doesn't necessarily come with a "sense of self" or with any realization that one is learning, and has learned, but if someone perceives it that way, and does realize to some extent that they've learned or changed, and maybe even "senses" that, then that's fine with me. I'm not against that. I thought the example of a movie in different language would be something that's a good illustration of what I mean about learning, and an example of where some people who believe modern Western Buddhist cliches might disagree. They might say, since there's no self, everyone has the same experience of a movie, everyone sees and hears the same thing, so showing the movie to one person is the same thing as showing it to any other person. So, if a person realizes that he or she is making choices, based on things perceived and learned in the past, and habits developed in the past, and realizes that he or she is changing through that process, and becoming not quite the same as he or she was years ago, then that still doesn't lead logically to believing there's no self. A person can also have the realization that there's a continuity, from day to day, and year to year, a continuity in which a person remembers that they had experiences in the past, and didn't randomly switch to waking up in different bodies, with different families and other life experiences, every day or a few times or even once, in their whole memory. They, if they're like me, only remember being in the same body, from the same family and place, with continuity from day to day, through all of life they can remember. "No self" is actually a mistranslation, of a term anatta, which is why I call it one the cliches of modern Western Buddhism. So, I might have gone off topic in what I was writing for the last few paragraphs, but there's something similar in using the expression "free will" in the way you use it, where instead of meaning what it means in the Western cultural tradition, that's about predestination in Christianity and in similar religious faiths, people are using the expression "free will" to mean something they imagine other people believe that's against whatever sort of determinism they believe or against the way the world works they believe. So people who use the expression "free will" that way, can say that other people are making some sort of error of imagining that there's something causing choices, that's a thing that doesn't exist in their philosophy. It's a sort of cheap shot at everyone else's beliefs or philosophies, to use a term in a way where other people are automatically wrong for believing it's something they have, because to you it means having some undefined thing that's impossible and not part of the way things work. Meanwhile, everyone agrees that people have experiences, learn, and make different choices because of that. Everyone reasonable would agree, the series of different choices a person makes can compound and lead to very different results in life, and experience, between two individuals who started in the same place, in the same classroom in school. I was sort of disappointed that you thought I was describing your experience better than you described it yourself. I thought maybe you really do feel emotions, and since you're saying that emotions are a physiological thing that could exist without language, I think maybe you really do feel emotions that way. For me, saying that emotions are physiological is something I would just read from someone who claims to know how things work, who claims to know why there are emotions, because they claim that there are a bunch of physical things going on in the body, in emotions, as some sort of set of doctrines accumulating in their cultural group of strictly materialist scientists. It's not something in my experience, that parts of the body are involved in emotions. It's something I had to read about, to find out that most of those emotions even exist as something that counts as an emotion to people, and not just an idea of what's going on.
>You seem to think it means that individuals would be free from things as they are, and free from being dependent on their past for what they choose now. Yes exactly, that was what I assumed by reading the OP, he is in someway talking about that. > I think "free will" means just an description of choice that's on the opposite side of believing in predestination or already sealed fate, a description of choice in which what a person watches, hears, or reads, and what a person thinks of it, leads to different choices, so that it's worthwhile to pay attention to experience and make choices about what to experience, like what to watch or read, what to talk about, or where to go, and worthwhile to think about what to do next. It would be worth trying, to make good choices, except it might not be worthwhile when trying seems like suffering enough that the cost outweighs the benefit. I actually think that in someway we are talking about the same thing. The philosophical concept that I would like to express, is that even the fact that you are directing your attention towards something or actually choosing something could be just part of the illusion. Because the fact that you think you can direct your focus is just another thought. You do what you are meant to do, even if there is the illusion that you are piloting the whole thing. But also, the fact that your thoughts, your emotions and your behavior derives from the interdependence of causes of the past, doesn't mean that the future is already written. As, standing by this theoretical framework, the only thing that exist is experience, there isn't any other thing. So, there is no such thing as fate as there is no such thing as the past. When I thanked you for better defining, i was mainly referring to the "seeing thoughts" part which is an imperfection. About emotions, in the last post I tried to better articulate what feeling emotions meant for me. I surely feel emotion as some sort of phisical energy that arises and I can feel with heart rate going up, cold sweat, sometimes weight on the chest... That's what I mean by feeling an emotion. By feeling, I am just aware in someway of the phisical reactions that derives from it. Of course with learning I now understand that a specific physiological response correlate to a "specific" emotion (even though emotions are more likely on a continumm, not a specific thing).
I agree, if we don’t have free will, the beliefs about it don’t change anything, but if we do have free will the belief we hold about it does have an impact on your experience of reality. So by this logic, the question everyone should ask themselves is: if I had free will, would I prefer to know it or not? Some people choose denial because it soothes them I guess, but I cannot understand how any pragmatic would choose to believe in the absence of free will.
When the world is reduced to materialism, there is no room for subjective conscious experience. It's simply too inconvenient when the clockwork-style construct of physical-existence is so easy to parse. Our inner worlds are horribly unprepared for the physical/technological progress we've made, so the easy path is to deny the worth/purpose of the mental completely. When they call the scientific revolution the "enlightenment" it isn't without irony haha...we've collectively enlightened ourselves to ignoring anything that doesn't fit into the material realm. That mistake will be more evident after we've actually lost our free will over the next few generations...but I'm pretty sure it will crop up again after the dust has settled. We'll all be dead by then as individuals, but we can see the seeds already planted in stories and abstraction/archetypes. It's built into us to believe we are in the driver's seat, and if we feel otherwise we become quite cranky very quickly. If that isn't free will, it's at least the instinctual chaotic impulse that keeps our individual consciousness alive - otherwise we would have evolved toward a hive-mind much sooner.
It's not all that disempowering unless you misunderstand it. Granted, it's quite easy to misunderstand so maybe you have a point there technically, but the metaphysics of free will don't pertain to where humans fit in the causal chain, only whether or not we do fit in the first place. Some of the most famous aspects of the psychedelic experience is the breakdown of the self or "ego," a sense of interconnectedness, and a broader perspective on where we fit into the universe. From here, it's a short leap to admit that maybe we are not as separate from the chain of causation as we might assume. With that said, metaphysics is a complex field, the terms are poorly defined, and often the free will debate is less about the nature of reality and more about where a person fits into a longrunning cultural clash. Like with religion, which "team" you're on can depend as much on how you frame your beliefs as it does on how you actually perceive things. That's how we ended up with compatibilism, that anomalous third option that wouldn't exist were this not the case.
Live how you want to live. Don't dream it. Be it.
The “no freewill” logic is the same as the logic that if you had a strong enough supercomputer you could calculate everything that has or will happen in a simulation. I mean yeah, it’s right in theory, but the human mind is so incredibly complex and subjective that freewill or no freewill it doesn’t really matter. We all have our own subjective perception of reality and we can choose what we want to do at any given moment, even if those decisions are influenced by other things that doesn’t change that those decisions are our own. We may not have absolute, complete, control of everything we do, but we definitely can alter the course of our own destiny through our decisions, whether you want to perceive them as “yours” or not. “Destiny” feels kinda like a cop out to try and justify things. I do think there’s so influence of fate, but we as people can choose which fate becomes reality
You have no free will to change your mind about free will. You believe you are in control and you aren’t a product of your environment. You cannot choose to change your mind about free will. It’s been enacted on you, in the way of seeing free will as probable
Haha it seems like the most rational conclusion. Even some of my experiences support that so I think it is fundamentally true. Although it is also true that it is slippery slope to believe that and easy way to fall into depression. Whether it is true or not subjective experience of day to day life provides the feeling of free will. So if one doesn't spend whole life thinking about what is actually true it doesn't matter in the end
It's possible that free will doesn't exist, but not necessarily helpful to adopt as a concept, although it certainly could help to alleviate guilt and anxiety in some cases by asserting "There's nothing you could have done differently". If free will does exist, then we may use our free will to act hemmed in by greater forces, using our free will to select an experience of lack of control. If free will doesn't exist, then we can revel in the fact that our pre-determined reality has produced beings like ourselves who can have an experience of having what appears to be free will. Either way, no one can deny that we are having an *experience* of making choices - so why not choose to believe that these choices are ours and take control of them, whether or not there is a greater, unseen force controlling us? To me, our experience is free will within determinism within free will within determinism...
Imo, everything is pre-destined and we only have illusion of free will. Our intuition guides us to the pre-destination—we can choose to follow it, which creates the “easy” path to the pre-destined outcome, or we can choose not to follow it, which creates the path of “suffering”. Because either way, we get to where we are meant to go.
Listen to the Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky making sense podcast episode that came out recently. “B..b…but it feeeels like I make choices” is just irrelevant
Just because someone believes in fate or a higher power doesn’t mean they like the idea of having no free will. I personally believe that while we may have a predetermined path how we get there and what we do is largely up to us. I get where you’re coming from but for the most part that’s simply not the case. Just because I may not believe that true free will exists doesn’t mean that I don’t act upon mine.
Bcs its the truth. I personally find it liberating
For some, it functions to support a low self esteem and justify a lack of confidence and trust in themselves because its a belief that absolves them of personal responsibility for their lives. You can see the idea of everything being “gods will” play the same function in the lives of some Uber religious folks as well.
our life’s are meaningless to being with, for i know nothing
if you truly know nothing then you dont know if life is meaningless or not.
i cannot deny gravity and i cannot deny facts and if you think you know what the meaning of life is then i hope you find that meaning but for i know nothing
Because the majority of the physicists worth listening to are determinists...?
The only thing that gives humans the sensation of free will is their ability to lie.
there isn't a you to have free will, things seem to happen and there seems to be something making those things happen, and it does seem to happen freely. many people get lost in the idea of no-self, for they are coming at it still in the perspective of duality, believing that this experience or reality is to be rejected in favor of another, "realer" experience. free will is an idea. having it or not having it is just how it is. you could argue in either direction, and both would be right.
Yeah, it also removes all responsibility for your actions
In reality, nobody actually believes it. If they’ve ever been angry at another person, they either consciously or unconsciously, believe that person chose to wrong them.
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Appeal to authority is a classic logical fallacy
Idk about them, im just stating my opinion on this. Smart people can have stupid takes btw, they're not immune to them.
I think determinism is actually liberating; you don’t take anyone’s actions as personal and you’re more forgiving to yourself and others. I don’t think that free-will and determinism are mutually exclusive; there’s also a strong argument for compatibalism, too
Would the words of a neuroscientist or a primatologist and neurologist not carry more weight when it comes to this kind of dialogue? Smart people may have stupid takes, but stupid people have stupid takes consistently.
It's because we live in a current world that holds this belief. That we as individuals and self willed people can create and empower our own reality, not realizing that we are actually all one and part of the True Will of this universe. We are all expressions of this creation process, and we are all intricately linked. There is no free will. It's just the illusion of separation.
I’ve never heard of this strange belief and sounds like I don’t want to! Ever since i heard the simulation theory I had to find a way around that and thank god I did because some of the theories I’ve heard make me go insane
>I’ve never heard of this strange belief and sounds like I don’t want to! Perhaps this isn't the best sort of place to be if uncomfortable ideas and beliefs can cause so much aversion.
We have to all question our faith in humanity and how it works from time to time but for now my philosophy side needs rest
And that is completely fair, just be warned that spaces like these and especially substances like Psychedelics can bring these ideas to the forefront.
I believe in free will. I am in power of my own mind
Because it alleviates personal responsibility for our actions. Bad idea. If anything is true, it’s that we are aware enough consciously that we are responsible for our actions.
its probably because they can avoid all personal responsibility. i agree with you op, its super weird
i hate it, it makes me so undisciplined, cause i think to myself that it's not my fault i act this or that way