See Alot Of Different Stuff Here So...

I can understand that. But if we suddenly decide that nobody technically has free will, whatever that's supposed to even mean, that shouldn't necessarily change anything, should it?

Let's assume that we don't have free will, by whatever determination. If I'm hungry, does that in any way change the experience of wanting to eat and then eating?

If I commit murder, I and all others should be less punished because we didn't have "free will"? If I decide to fuck my best friend's girlfriend, I should just be let off the hook by my best friend because I didn't have any free will in the matter?

 

With a child getting a hold of a gun, I think there should be strict penalties for the caretakers of that child not locking their guns up...and being careless.....stiff fines......very stiff fines...maybe that would send the message that a gun is just an accident waiting to happen......or at least, people might pay more attention to where and how they keep their guns.
Someone has to be accountable sometimes.

 

So we go from insinuating the child is completely responsible in the poster above yours response (until it's phrased that way of course) to blaming someone who did not even commit the murder in your response. The question It prompts for me is Why is it that there is such a disconnect here in just 2 responses?

My question to you is why do you not think the young child should be held responsible?

 

Are you able to elaborate further on this point? Isn't Determinism defined as something which can predict the outcome of any event if the entire system is understood? If this is so, how can QM be considered a Determinism of chance? Isn't chance and chaos itself the very antithesis of Determinism? Or are you saying that you can predict where the dice will fall?

Bell's Theorem alone forces us to either give up Determinism or give up the notion of an objective reality that can be measured by Science altogether.

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/PVB/Harrison/BellsTheorem/BellsTheorem.html

 

Not at all.......I think children should be held responsible, of course. Everyone should.i was thinking of a story i heard recently about a 6 year old or was he younger accidentally shooting his baby sister or something....but one has to wonder.....how can people be responsible for their guns, if they cannot even be responsible for their own children to let things like this happen.

 

If you think a young kid should be held responsible, how are the parents "letting" it happen?

 

Are you going to have a gun somewhere where a child of 5 or 6 years old is going to be able to get their hands on it and fire it?...and i do believe the child did not kill his sister intentionally in the story i was told.

 

No, but I don't think they would be responsible for their actions.

 

Who? The child was playing.....I safe proof this house CONSTANTLY so no animal gets hurt ever on something I did not think of.....and I am always aware of what is going on with all of them in this house.....
What were these parents doing?!!!!!!!!

 

In the usual course of things we do eat when hungry. But what about people who go on hunger strike? There was the famous case here in the UK a few years back of Bobby Sands, an IRA prisoner who went on hunger strike, and eventually died as a result.
OK - Sands may have been under some external pressure to act as he did, from the political and maybe the religious culture of which he was a part.
But something in that person clearly proved stronger than the natural drive to eat and survive.
I'm not saying he was right to do as he did, but it does seem like a good example where many people would conclude that free will must certainly have played a part.

Also, if it's pointless to debate whether we have free will or not, then all ethical questions would seen equally to be meaningless and pointless, since with no free will we have no free choice.

 

upon further reflection and reading, I retract my previous post and will say that the OP's take on Free Will is essentially the same as presented in the "Law of One" teachings, specifically the portion in bold.
Now if we allow for the idea of all things/entities deriving from one source that is in possession of intelligence, then the rest of it stands logically.


I might also point out that such ideas/beliefs is not atheism, they simply do not define "god" by the same criteria as most, nor is it full of religious trappings and hoopla, but most definitely holds to the idea of a "Creator".

 

IMHO, for our immediate purpose and condition, free will is the ability to act in ways that are in contradiction to our instinctual urges.

take a look at the ten commandments or similar basic laws from any culture, they are all about controlling base animal instincts of survival and reproduction.

I think we at times forget just how much human behavior is dictated by instinct.

 

I disagree. You and I are clearly using our words very differently and it would seem that our views are worlds apart. I can see no way to bridge that gap. In cases where I believe that it is impossible to move forward with the conversation I at least like to try to arrive at the crux of the matter, for the sake of clarity. To that end I will simply state the following: You and I have very different views about the terms "free will", "autonomy", and "choice", and that is fine. I am not arguing that my use of the terms is better than yours.

We are clearly interpreting the term "free will" very differently because you apparently think that free will is a valid concept, whether beings in this universe have it or not, whereas I do literally view the term free will and "awiodjwioadjiodj" to be identical in their meanings. Free will is an unintelligible concept in my view. Free will would not be possible in a deterministic world, an indeterministic world, or a world with any imaginable mixture of determinism and indeterminism.

As for autonomous, I do believe that is an intelligible concept but only in the sense of "governed from within". In my use of the word a robot is autonomous in this sense: Why did that robot move just now, did some external force act upon it? No, it is programmed to move like that, it is "governed from within". No illusion here, I was not trying to use autonomy as some sort of compatibilist free will.

Agreed on that point, we just arrive at different conclusions based on it. All meaning is an illusion, but meaning is still there to be felt.

 

Very true, and very hard to explain, in my experience, to people who have not arrived at the conclusion on their own. A humorous way I like to put it is "Pronouns are a part of speech, not a part of the world."

 

To me the only thing that changes in regard to criminal justice when we dispense with free will is that we dispense with moral responsibility. That still leaves the practical application of the law. A robot programmed to kill needs to be removed from society, even if we know that the robot is not morally responsible. It is still materially responsible, and society must act to protect itself. Now of course people with severe mental illnesses that cause them to be violent do not belong in jails, but they do not belong roaming free in society either. And children unwittingly causing tragic accidents is clearly different from either of these cases, and can be resolved without reference to free will.

 

Forget about "I eat because I am hungry" and think "I do things because I have a reason". This person clearly had a reason for their actions, but the free will question is about whether it is "up to him" that he had a reason to act the way he did, and whether it is "up to him" that he was the kind of person who could carry that reason to fruition. My answer is clearly no, it was not up to him to have a reason and not up to him to be able to bring that reason to fruition. Another way to put it is this: My intentional actions flow from my character, but I am not responsible for the character that I possess. To give an example from my life, I like to donate to charity, but I never chose to like to donate to charity.

 

I would agree. Personally, I feel that there is definitely such thing as authentic autonomy and free will. But it's kind of impossible to prove or disprove it. Actions just lead to consequences.

 

Interesting. But isn't the difference between a human and a robot that the human chooses to suddenly move, even if it has a program to do so? A robot just moves because of the programming. Can we say that it chose to move?

 

I would argue that the illusory "me" is rather different than the "I", which is more Universal. It seems that the person you quoted is mixing the two. He is suggesting that when you look within, you find no "Self", but it would be more appropriate to say that you find no "self" with a lowercase s, to signify that this is the Ego self that we all identify with as "me". This "me" is a persistent illusion, but when you really search for it, you can't find it.

But the "I" is what the Self is with a capital S, which is the one that is doing the looking in the first place. It is the eternal witness, searching for and not finding the "me". This "I" is nonpersonal, but is contained within all beings, which defines its nonpersonality.

 

Kind of a nature vs. nurture question. I would still say that you have free will, though, right? At least philosophically. You're never completely outside of the influence of your environment. You could choose to be a cannibal at this very instant if you wanted to. Nothing is stopping you. But generally, culture raises you to not want to do that. But that doesn't mean you can't.