Do You Believe In Free Will?

i still like to think that awareness is this completely independent non-physical thing, that all these aspects of physical form, merely provide a host for, and a means of interacting with a physical environment.
the reason such a thing can't be physically found is that it is a non-physical thing. and call me weird, but i do believe that completely non-physical things can and do exist independent of physical measurement or observation.
now that doesn't mean i support all of the dumb things beliefs are used as an excuse for, just that physical existence isn't an absolute limit to all existence.
that's why i believe there can still be a god, or lots of them, without they're having to have anything to do, with any kind of beliefs people have about them.
because basically our awareness is the same sort of thing, and a god is just a more powerful one.
i believe that was what was originally meant by this idea of image, rather then anything to do with physical appearance.

of course there's no reason i can't be wrong on all counts, but this is what makes sense to me.

 

There are some good points here. Awareness/Consciousness is definitely a non-physical thing that can't be found and yet that nonetheless exists. It can't be found because the one looking for it IS the awareness/consciousness itself. To me, this is the aspect of you that eternally has the autonomy. I feel that there is autonomy, even though the question of free will I also feel to be a purely philosophical question.

If I have nothing to do and am in the mood to go on a drive, then I will do that as long as I have gas, keys, and my car works. A real lack of a free will seems like it would be something more like that I wouldn't have the capability to will myself to get into my car and drive, even if I wanted to. As long as I have this capability, then I have the free will. Outside of that, who really cares whether you philosophically have free will or not, or whether you chose to make the choice or not? I'm still going to get in my car because I feel like it, regardless of this flimsy free will notion being there or not.

 

My sentiments exactly. I also think the word "autonomy" is the best fit here, especially when going back to the word's roots to "self ruled or governed". I also find the topic of free will to only be a topic of discussion, I talk about it because I think it is interesting, but the outcome of the conversation and my beliefs about free will or its lack will not affect my life one iota. Even if I am not responsible for the content of my character I can still feel the joy of acting in accordance with my character.

 

Your example provided is in part why I see the topic as so utterly important. I find your evasions of the topic of free will, are based on what seems little more than a semantical qualm..

Presumably the robot cannot ponder these questions and this is what makes the issue so important. We're not going to put a dog or cat on trial for domestic abuse either if they attack their owner but we can realize as humans that possibly we might have formed certain social structures in a way, which might be inefficient for increasing understanding, technology, etc and possibly be even down right wrong in certain circumstances. IMO If we have a better understanding of free will, it can possibly provide a restructuring of societal norms that is a tier just below that of understanding that Slaves were 3/5 a person or women are inferior to men and all the associated laws that have changed in such views overtime.

 

So if it's determined that we don't have free will, then what are you implying? How should such laws be carried out towards murderers?

 

What evasions? What have I been evading? I think quite the opposite, I have been attempting in this thread to address the issue head on, both by clarifying my position, inviting others to respond directly to me, and stating more than once that I could be very wrong. Unless by evasion you mean equivocation. That would make more sense. I could see how at first glance my position may seem to vacillate, but again I do not think the charge is correct. My thoughts about autonomy do not represent equivocation regarding my thoughts on free will.

I never argue semantics. That is something that people do to win formal debates, I am trying to obtain a clearer view of reality. This is why I try to be as clear and concise as possible, and as I have pointed out elsewhere, to achieve clarity and determine the crux of the matter. At first glance, again, it may seem that I am arguing semantics but I believe if you give my posts deeper consideration you will see that this is not true. Hence my dismissal of compatiblist free will: to me that is semantics.

A somewhat humorous example, because of course we do "put a dog or cat on trial." We kill vicious dogs, not because we hold them morally responsible for being violent, but because they are a danger to society.

It is neither necessary nor sufficient to believe in free will to arrive at this conclusion. The point is equally valid with or without free will. I would go so far as to say the point is even more obvious if one believes in a deterministic world (Which I do not. As I have said elsewhere in this thread my lack of a belief in free will is not based on physical determinism). The point is more forceful the more determinism one believes in because it seems in effect that you are saying that social institutions have a major effect on people's behavior (obviously true, but seemingly more so if determinism is true).

I honestly don't know what you mean by this.

 

The obvious question is what do you do with mass murderers if it's decided that there is no free will? Do you just simply shift treating them as criminals to treating them as insane, and get them help? That could work. It has worked regarding drug use in Portugal and de-criminalizing all drugs. But you can do that without coming to any conclusion about no free will.

This is completely hypotheticial, but if I fuck my best friend's girlfriend behind his back, should I just be let off the hook when he finds out, because my desire to plow my best friend's girlfriend is out of my hands or responsibility?...

I could just start smashing one car after another with a baseball bat in my neighborhood and I wouldn't deserve to receive any consequences because I had no free will in the matter? Seems rather silly doesn't it? I would even argue that it's a cowardly cop-out.

 

Everything predetermined says nothing about how passionately you should feel about things. Maybe humanity will split into two camps, one who thinks it's predetermined that we should feel passionately and one who thinks that everything's being predetermined, we shouldn't feel too passionately. When someone is punished severely for a crime, it's because people feel passionately about it. I think the people who think it's predetermined that we should feel passionately will win the day, as people will always feel passionately whether they want to or not. It's just like the ridiculous person who tries to bottle their emotions by repeating the mantra "I'm not going to get angry, I'm not going to get angry" and then explodes. We can't just tell ourselves, "Well, everything's predetermined; it's not really Jeffrey's fault" and expect ourselves to actually be able to live with that. If we do reason that way, the anger will simply emerge in a different way, and I think we will find that rather than taking things to the extreme of saying, "No one is responsible for anything any longer," it will be just as reasonable as not to keep things as they are.

All in all, I'm not sure how everything's being determined changes the way we function in regards to holding people responsible for their actions. It's not his/her fault that they murdered people. It's not my fault that I sought revenge. Etc. Etc. Why should anything be any different than it is now?

 

I'm looking at this from a proactive not retroactive stance, if free will is an illusion and you maintain all these things are immoral and reprehensible then hopefully, with the knowledge in place that certain triggers or circumstances may lead you to this behavior, counter measures can be put in place to limit, if not prevent incidents like that.

However, If we have free will in all these circumstances and you just freely choose to be a douchebag, then I guess you're just a douchebag. But I think in finding the knowledge of that freedom, I think humanists potentially can have more leadership if that was found likely to be our underlying human nature.

 

The part you don't understand goes along with what you're making the bold claims of what is neither necessary or sufficient to arrive at a conclusion

At one point in a time, a slave was a slave. The argument I hear coming from you as well as a few others when applied to that situation is basically akin to saying that whether some "civilized" people thought slaves were fully human or others thought they were basically little more than beasts, they were what they were. As if the social constructs of the time were set in stone and not subject to change. In this example, hopefully we can see the glaring misunderstandings of those social contracts on the status of humans maintained as slaves and with the abolishment of slavery, how social dynamics can evolve and can be necessary for better understanding and moreover progress.

That example is a bit extreme to the the general issue of free will, but it is somewhat relevant imo to certain populations, such as overcrowded prisons and the mentally ill amongst an ever increasing population size.

 

I didn't go back and read the other thread that I linked, maybe there was something in there to draw upon but why is Free Will a meaningless concept?

This is part of the evasive nature of your points as I see it, you provide circumstance where we possibly have a determined universe, or a random universe and everything in between but for some unexplained reason, apparently free will cannot be possible?? I don't follow your reasoning.

 

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that this whole problem of free will developed after the advent of the group ethic---that is, it developed among our planter culture ancestors. In fact, I haven’t thought of this before, but I don’t even see it questioned in indigenous traditions and spirituality. Free will is pretty much taken for granted in these traditions, I believe---though I have only today started considering this. Tribal people place a heavy emphasis on the individual. Prophecy, for example, is always based on if man does this, or if he never does that.

Lakota myth, for example, is very complex, and it certainly rivals Greek traditions and its philosophy in its complexity and uncanny resemblance to modern science in many regards. Lakota prophecies speak of a potential doom, but humans always have the choice to not allow such finalities to happen. In fact man is given signs—such as the White Buffalo, and even helpers, such as White Buffalo Calf Woman---to come help man make the right choices. But it is always understood that man has to make the choice and may not make those choices, or that not all men will make those choices. But if enough men make the right choices there is no doom for mankind. The Lakota were largely hunter gatherers with some early planter traditions, whereas the Greeks were of a Post-Planter culture, and did question free will, such as in the Oedipus Tragedy.

Compare this, for example, also to the Christian tradition, which preaches of free will, but then presents a deterministic future wherein the apocalypse and Judgment Day is an inescapable event .

Reference has been made to an Eastern interpretation where Free Will is an illusion---again, straight out of Planter Culture tradition.

But there is no surprise here. The planter tradition brought us a greater focus on objectivism, because the group represents, not the extended self (a subjectivist reality), but the Other to the self (an objectivist reality). If there is a greater sense of objective reality and a subservient sense of subjective reality, then of course objective reality, where man has a lesser sense of free will, would rule. Cartesian philosophy only exaggerated the value of objectivism for the Modern Age----not only the individual, but life itself lost meaning and value to objective considerations. Any more, humans, like every other object in an objective world, do not have anything more than a monetary market value.

I generally agree with the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy that most philosophical arguments of free will involve simply a freedom to express or determine one’s own will. The fact that you could choose between coffee or tea represented a freedom of choice.

If I am reading Mr.Writer correctly, or was it, TheWriter, you would always make the same choice but believe that you had a choice. If you selected coffee the first time, and your life was rewound, you would select coffee again every time, but you would believe that you had a choice. Oedipus’ father could send his son away to be killed, or lock him in a dungeon, or do whatever he could to prevent him from murdering him and taking the mother as a wife, but it would still happen.

I disagree. In fact a mundane example, such as, ‘should I have a cup of coffee or tea,’ where the choices have equal value, benefit, or result in an equal incentive yet depend entirely on individual taste, mood, and other subjective values, might very well demonstrate free will against the argument that it is illusion. If free will is illusion there must be some sort of determinant that decides why one drink would be chosen over another. If the choice appears random, but is based on purely subjective factors, then it must represent examples of the exercise of the freedom of choice, which is a simple example of volition or will----free will. Sartre uses the example of two very difficult choices, but which have equal values on the one hand, with the caveat that either choice will benefit one of two parties, while hurting the other party, wherein there is no compromise to mutually benefit both. For example, a difficult choice that means benefitting the wife, but hurting the mother, or benefitting the mother but hurting the wife.

Determinism results in a predestined future. I have trouble reconciling any such thing with the uncertainty principle. Indeterminism, according to most arguments, means that one has total freedom to choose, which again, means a freedom to express or determine your will (Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy). However indeterminism does not sit well with the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics.

Also I would argue that the predictability and uniformity of human choices does not deny or discredit free will. This uniformity tends to reflect cultural programming. The choices made by the people in a remote Chinese village, for example, will tend to be uniform and predictable in a way that is very different from the choices made by upper middle class White Anglo Saxons in New York. For the Modern Industrialized and semi-industrialized world, consumerism shapes many decisions---advertisements, promotions, bill boards---the nonstop onslaught of what one philosopher called, the spectacle.

But even then, there is still a certain level of subjectivity in how these choices are made. However the existentialist interpretation is that most people are not genuine, or as Kierkegaard said, they are not authentic individuals. In fact, when faced with their own true existential freedom, they experience “fear and trembling” in other words, whether they know it or not, they are afraid of taking their lives into their own hands and would prefer to let someone else have power over them. Alieantion is another problem.

Hegel defined alienation as the self becoming the other ----being-for-the-other rather than being-for-itself. (Marx decided this was the result of the market, but then made the mistake of assuming that the market is only an aspect of capitalism. And then made the overly objectivist and reductionist assumption that the individual only comes to be in a communist society.)

More correctly, I believe alienation also includes estrangement from the self---particularly the subconscious aspects of it.

But it takes a certain level of individuation before one can really grasp free will. Free will is a characteristic of a true individual.

 

Consider that a deterministic universe has a predetermined future.

It is interesting that the religious who believe in a predetermined future, believe in free will. However, the scientific-minded, who one would think would be more open to a future of unlimited potential do not believe in free will.


Is this really right? If so, then speaking in general terms, this seems to be a typical folly of man that displays his philosophical ignorance------he embraces a concept without realizing its implications. Like a gun-toting, war-mongering pro-lifer...



I am not implying by this statement that either side is right. Nor am I including a scientist who argues against free will, and understands its implications, or a religious person who understands the inconsistency and can still defend his/her belief. But generally speaking...

 

I don't think there is inherently any folly there, although I do agree that it seems rather counter-intuitive to the way these groups generally form their beliefs and conceptions of reality...

First off, it should be noted that we're talking about broad generalizations, highlighted by relaxxx's response, but for the sake of discussion I'll go with it...

The religious (populations this applies to) believe that God imbued them with free will. With a God that transcends the laws of the Universe in their minds, the consequences of a predetermined universe somehow doesn't cover all that is possible amongst the universe. A lot of that justification probably relies on faith, but I don't find it inconsistent with many other religious beliefs such as being 'spiritual' beings and the like.


The scientific-minded likely sees us as inherently connected to and part of the Universe. Therefore, there is no way for us to formulate ideas and concepts which are not influenced and developed directly within the Universe. If everything we are and do is comprised in the universe, then it constrains the notion that we are asserting ourselves in a way that is not influenced by the parameters that we develop and are in.

 

This makes sense. But why does this get rid of Free Will? If everything is made out of Universe, then Free Will and choice would also be made out of Universe as well. All these further contemplations are pointless. If there is Conscious choice, then there is Free Will. So what if your thoughts are influenced or not? You can even go far into finding out how the sub-conscious influences you, or your cultural upbringing or family tree. You can understand all of that and still make your own choices at the end of the day. Going into further endless contemplation about whether you chose the choice or not is eventually just going to point YOU back to the Self, which is the formless Consciousness and the one contemplating whether I chose to make the choice or not. But as long as I can go, "I'm going to take a shower now", and then am able to do that, then I have Free Will.

Lack of a Free Will seems that it would be more along the lines of something like being in a coma or being a vegetable, where you have no self-governing properties inherent within you.

We can also contemplate social freedom, but even then I would say that you still inherently have your own Free Will in any country, but you may just face different consequences for your various choices. Again, you are influenced by your Culture, but you still make your own choices within it.

Saying that you are influenced by the Universe in no way gets rid of your autonomy. You can (or not) utilize the Universe and its energies as much as you choose, in an infinite variety of ways. Whatever you like.

I just feel that this claim of everything influencing some aspect of you is like saying that everything contains Space. So what? Does this get rid of the existence of objects, just because they are all being influenced by Space? Replace Space with Weather. The Weather definitely influences my choices and ability to go on a trip, but ultimately it is my choice of whether I decide to go on a trip or not, despite the Weather conditions.

I'm going to go take a shower now.

 

It gets rid of Free Will because you are not making Conscious Choice based on your own volition, conscious choice is being 'forced' upon you by numerous variable in the environment, hence it's not "free".

the common analogy which I think better represents the concept of a lack of free will is how you are not consciously making your heart beat or not consciously regulating any other of several autonomic functions.


To the second paragraph, Well we know we cannot just fly to the Sun, or even go into space without proper measures (parameters), such as equipment, safety so on and so forth, a challenge I even suggested here not that long ago. So that inherently makes your notion of choice in infinite ways false, how limited that restriction in choice is the issue. It is something that needs to be studied more, some of it likely will rely on advances in technology.

I find this experiment interesting, it relies on a slippery slope to apply it to humans but it should at least make us question free will and how the issue will likely become increasingly more relevant in the near future assuming a consistent trajectory of advances in technology, although some do not think the concept of free will is applicable to animals and probably bugs in particular.

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/watch-flying-remote-controlled-cyborg-bug/

http://youtu.be/iljHXpE4LG8

 

It is still you who is choosing to figure out a way to get to the Sun. How it happens may influence whether it is actually possible or not (such as the weather on the trip) or how you go about it, but it is your original intent and thought to try to get there in the first place. Hence, Free Will.

Your organism is like your suit. A meat suit. But it is YOU who is the awareness within the suit, and who steers it as you may.

It was the Scientists' original intent to conduct the experiment on the bugs in the first place. They could also poison me, and I would puke because of it. But it was their Free Will to drug me. Just because my body reacts on its own to the poison, doesn't get rid of my Free Will to attempt to run to the bathroom. Or I could just puke on the carpet if I decide that I don't have time to make it there.

 

I agree that if free will does exist, imagination would be a good sort of (in)direct evidence for it, however I cringe at your following paragraph, with examples of multiple sclerosis, parkinsons, paralysis and so on in mind.

 

Physical and/or mental hindrances definitely would limit your Free Will. And that's a practical way to look at the issue of Free Will. But does this mean that therefore Free Will doesn't exist at all? I wouldn't say so. There's no water in the desert, but that doesn't mean water doesn't exist at all. If you don't get water in time, your life ends, but does that mean that therefore Life doesn't exist at all?

 

Water is a parameter for life to exist.

I don't really see how the desert comparison is applicable but again there are parameters to which compromise a desert.