Freewill vs. Determinism

There are many ways to understand free-will that don't go completely against the mechanistic/deterministic picture of the brain. It's not as black and white as most people make it out to be.

 

"what is will" is a great question. what causes electrons to do what they do, single-celled organisms to do what they do, our brains to operate in the way they do, groups of people to behave similarly when put together, the planet to rotate around the sun?, etc. to say our thoughts are caused by certain forces is like saying we rotate around the sun because of gravity. if you don't know what gravity is, that's not much of an answer is it? if you don't know the origin of matter and energy, how can you explain the origin of thought with an explanation based on the patterns of matter and energy? as usual, this all goes back to the question of origin, which, if followed far enough, will enivitably lead you either to or beyond the brick wall of the limits of your logic.

 

Ofcourse what you and i say here doesn't change the truth at all. It never did, and it is obviously a debate.

What I was getting at is that there are some innate skills and tendencies in everyone of us. To what degree and how they are expressed depends on us, but alot of people don't make any choice, so they let their innate tendencies to play out their daily lives.

 

I believe in both. I believe that as individuals we have free will but as for the Earth and mankind as a group, their future has been determined.

 

that seems like a logical fallacy to me.....

 

I might actually agree with that. The thing is, your choices do affect your outcomes. It's just that both the choices and the outcomes were predetermined. If you believe what I do, all your choices, every fleeting thought, every strange and wonderful dream, and this conversation we are having all had to happen, and could not have happened any other way. Because we can't understand it, it doesn't mean a whole lot, and we really can't act like our decisions are not our own.

Yes, certain chemicals in certain amounts can mess up the brain, but what I'm talking about is less general and more specific. So a part of your brain might think about suicide. All the pictures would flash through your mind, the emotions, etc. Some of the things that you picture in your head would convince you that this is not a good idea. Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain generally regarded as the part for impulse control. When people have this part damaged, they can become totally different people, because their personality actually changes. People won't like them as much, and they'll blurt things that they would normally keep to themselves. There was a story a while ago about a woman (christian, loyal, chaste) who had a head injury and then couldn't stop coming on to and having sex with random guys, even when her husband around. Can she really have chosen to do that? Where does her soul come in there? The way we act and the people we are are both very reliant on how our brain is formed.

 

please consider my above statement, freaker. i would like an intelligent response if possible. i value your perspective, as it so different from my own and there has obviously been much work put into the creation of it.

 

Hi yyyesiam2,
I was wondering when you said: "that seems like a logical fallacy to me" were speaking about my comment?

 

yes sir. i meant no disrespect. i just don't see how the individual can have free will if the fate of their race is determined. this would mean that no matter how free the individual thought his or her actions were, they would only be predetermined steps leading to the fate of his/her race.

 

If

 

Hi yyyesiam2,
No disrespect taken.

I don’t know if you’ve read The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov but in it he comes up with the idea of psychohistory. Which is that in large groups mankind is predicable the larger the group the more predicable but on the individual level no such predictability is possible. Now I know that it is only science fiction but that is along the line of what I was talking about and it's a good read.

Assuming an Omniscient God, the only way that an individual can have free will is if that God chooses not to know how that individual will use his free will. Because as soon as an Omniscient God decided to foreknow what that individual would do, that individual would no longer have free will in the matter. But as for the whole of mankind he could foresee what they as a group would do with out foreseeing the individual. To simplify it would be a little like us guaranteeing that the result of a million coin flips would be 50/50 but not being able to tell you whether the next flip would be heads or tails.

 

All things are predetermined. Every reaction must have an action placing it in motion, otherwise it can not occur. This is obvious in nature, so why is it that humans find it necessary to distinguish themselves as something "higher" than nature? We exist in the same reality as all other things and are liable to the same fundamental truths.

Every decision we make can be translated into a formula made up of an unimaginable number of variables. When we come to be, we begin to process information nano-second by nano-second. Each bit of information is stored in the brain and effects the other information in our brain accordingly, even creating new bits of information through combination, so that no information can be retreived that has not already been processed, consciously or subconsciously. When we make a choice, these bits of information are the variables in the equation that decides what decision we will make. And even though the formula itself is unimaginable, doesn't mean its non-existant.

Just because WE can't predict what a person is going to do with any degree of certainty, doesn't mean that it isn't determined. It only indicates our inability to calculate such a complex equation, especially since it is an equation that can change multiple times in just a single second, and fluctuates as we age.

One can not argue that a person has freewill just because they realise they have the power to make a decision. Because the realization then becomes a variable in the equation. Anytime a human acts unpredictably, there is a reason, and that reason was a result of all that came before it. Nothing can come into existance on its own, accept maybe existance itself.

 

To answer an earlier question, I believe there is much more to free will than the ability to choose an action or make a decision. This is my own opinion, so take it at face value. I think free will can be linked more closely to the human ego than anything else. I have not been able to come up w/ a concrete definition, so I will try to explain what I mean.

A paralized person cannot move, but does this eliminate will? I say no, that although the choice of walking has already been decided for him, he still can want to walk and imagine walking. He cannot choose to walk b/c his physical condition does not allow that, but his thought process can still be focused on a choice he cannot make.

Likewise w/ your example of the woman w/ the brain injury, she has lost the ability to control impulses due to a physical injury, much like the paralyzed person. So although she cannot choose not to have sex w/ multiple partners b/c of the lack of impulse control, she still can feel regret, remorse, and other thoughts which condemn her actions. She may want to stop having sex w/ strangers, but like the paralyzed man who cannot walk no matter how much he wants to, she cannot control her impulses.

So in short, I believe the will has much to do w/ the ego rather than the ability to choose freely. After all, we can learn how to change negative thought patterns, attitudes, and many other aspects of our thoughts, wishes and desires. A person may be a pesstimist, but that does not mean that person will always be one.

Just an alternative idea on the classic free will vs. determinism debate...

Peace and love

 

I like this account. I agree wholeheartedly. This is like the compatibalist account. It says that a will does not have to be something to goes against the laws of nature or the mechanics of the brain, it just has to be something that eminates from YOU, the agent. As long as it's YOU who are making the decisions to act, that constitutes a will. If it's a question of the agent's ability to control their body or impulses, that has more to do with whether the will is free or not, but an unfree will is still a will (just think of someone shackled up in chains).

 

to OWB: this may be true most of the time, but not always. we tend to behave like sheep in herds because we're programmed to be so. the greatest changes in society are usually brought about by those who strayed from the herd, or group mind. i do feel there is a group mind at work here, but that, because of freewill, we do not have to accept what that group mind is headed for, or what seems to us to be "fate". it is possible to predict what a group of people will do, but the prediction will not always be right. i still have to say i don't see any proof that our future is predetermined, just that there are more likely scenarios than others. the power of the individual stands far above that of the herd.

 

yaya , we have a will that only a god may command . you shall do it . maybe only once or twice in a lifetime you'll experience this . it's only been intuited as a reality of goodness and purpose and is most difficult to express in concrete social language - thus the god idea . to understand and prove anything about it may require natural evolutionary time : an evolution of communal concious awareness , that is , a more objective One-Life mind and a like-wise advanced way of remembering .

reasoning the nature of will from moment-to-moment observation seems inadequate . since we reason with pattern language , events need to show a pattern . oh , Time ...

who shall will the phoenix to rise and sing ?

 

forgot to mention....there is no gauruntee that a million coin flips will be 50/50

 

Hi yyyesiam2,
Thanx for writing back.
Also from what you have said, I think you would like The Foundation Series. It also talks about the anomalies you speak of, as being predicable. It just has a number of interesting ideas.

But anyway I digress; I’m just trying to show why I believe that both are true under differing circumstances. Normally when one enters in to a discussion of freewill versus predetermination an Omniscient God is the balance point. As in, if life is predetermined then someone had to predetermine it. And as I mentioned before assuming an Omniscient God all he would have to do is foreknow something and by definition it would be predestined to happen or he could not by definition be Omniscient. Thus taking my example of coin flips, if a million coins where tossed into the air an Omniscient God could say 500 of them will be heads at that point the amount of heads and tails would be predetermined but if one of the coins was marked by you so you could later find it, that coin would so to speak have free will and could be either heads or tails because the individual coins had not been predetermined just the out come of all the coins.

 

if a person believes that they will sprout wings and fly away after jumping off a cliff, does that mean it will happen? Can we willingly change the laws of gravity? Many people, when faced with choices, feel their mind move easily from one idea to the other and think that if they wanted, they could choose either one, but it only a trick of the mind.

 

The point that is being missed is that although the choice comes from the agent, the agent is basing that choice off of prior experience. It doesn't matter is the person has the ability to do as he or she pleases, it only matters that that decision is completely dependent upon what occured before it.


The example of the woman with brain damage: it been said that her will is illustrated through her ability to judge the situation how she feels, even if she doesn't have the ability to control it. But her will and her ego are products of her experiences. Nothing can come from nothing.

It would be easier to rephrase: we have will, but that will is predetermined.

OR because we have freewill we are predetermined to make the decisions we do. The will is just another variable in the equation calculating what we are going to do next.