Free Will

There is no god.

 

It always gives me a headache thinking about stuff like this so I'll just say to a certain extent, yes we have free will.

 

I just like to think we can do whatever the hay we want and face whatever consequences, be they good or bad, from our decisions.

 

I believe that whatever happens happens for the best, but the big picture is so big it's not worth even trying to comprehend it.

 

Well that depends entirely if one prescribes to the process you described as who we are or not, some might not, but quite frankly I do, we are a collection of past experiences etc. However I don't prescribe to either free will or lack thereof, I can't fly or breath under water unaided no matter how much I will it, my will is by no means free to be, or lacking in entirety, as that natural process is who we are. We have limited will, but it is ours.

Oh and what Testyal said, even though it hasn't come up yet, but I got something for that if it does.

 

Free will, to me, is enigmatic.

We are born
We are raised
And we experience.

All of which we have no control over, and it's this that defines our growth and who we are.
We then take who we are and apply it to situations and this is how we act.

We will always act as ourselves in any situation, there is no exception.

To some, that means there's no free will, as you're confined to a path.
To others, that only proves it because you're acting as yourself.

But are you acting as yourself because you want to be?
Or are you acting as yourself because you force yourself to?

 

Today I found a major plothole in the whole "god gave us free will to let us choose what we want" And yet in the jonah story its all "These people started being mean to eachother, tell them to stop being mean and worship me or i will destroy them all!" So yeah.

 

Well, they could have chosen not to be mean, you know.

Just because you can do whatever you want doesn't mean there won't be consequences when not making the right choices.

 

I am of the belief that yes, we do have free will. But we and are actions are also a compilation of past experiences in our lives and the environments we encounter. Our previous decisions effect our future decisions by changing the way we behave and are perceived in small ways. However, we are still liable to change. Just because somebody acts a certain way because they have become accustomed to acting that way doesn't mean they will continue to. We have mid-life crisis's that cause us to re-evaluate who we are, and sometimes we change drastically as a consequence of every day actions.

If we didn't have free will, then I don't see how I could have come to like and enjoy MLP, let alone begin to watch it. The show changed who I was, but only because I had the free will to be changed by it. If my entire person was made up of the experiences I have had. I would never have given the show a chance, but because of said experiences, I did keep away from the show for quite a while (About three months since I heard about it).

To me, free will is ultimately how we react to situations. We will often react in the pre-described way that our previous experiences dictate. However, we are able to act against that, and that, to me, is free will.

 

"The unfolding of physics" is exceedingly vague. That could mean anything.

However, I agree that we must look at larger principles in the universe in order to understand the small workings of our mind.

That's fair, but to only say as much is also to argue in the opposite direction. What I mean is that your argument could also be turned around, and could be used to say that since the universe as a whole displays some sort of consistency and follows some natural laws, there must of course be an outside will forcing the universe to adhere to those laws.

Which, I might add, is not something that I believe is true. Therefore, I would say that while on the surface your argument seems quite reasonable, under its skin all that is truly present is the forgone conclusion that you very nearly stated yourself. Given that the universe follows some set laws, and that those laws are a part of that same universe, the universe governs itself. Following that train of thought, our mind also governs itself.

That's what "free will" is.

Exactly.

Your experiences and genetics are parts of your mind. Ergo, your mind governs itself. The idea that this relationship is not "free will" is actually quite absurd, especially given that such an argument is rooted in the idea that you cannot control your experiences and thus cannot control any aspect of your mind. But your experiences are the past, the result of what was your active present state. Which means that right now you are creating experiences. You have choices that you will make in the future make based on those experiences. To summarize, these choices that are based on the experiences you cannot control are what free will is.

Remember, "free will" is not the same thing as "absolute control." I would agree with you if you said that we are not in absolute control of the entire universe.

We do happen to control ourselves, but we cannot control the way in which we control ourselves.

Make sense?

 

We are programmed to respond in particular ways.

When you question free will, you assume that our mind is not our own. I am my brain and my brain is me. The choice it makes is my choice.

 

To be fair, that's hardly relevant. Modern medicine is considered a "practice" and not a "science", yet that does not make it less science-based. Science is more a process than anything else. Yet I see how you could think in that way. Language is arbitrary. Words can only signify larger meaning. Thus, this misunderstanding is normal.

 

For sure, you'd be correct in saying that each human observes the universe in different ways. However, your emphasis on science is really the answer to that conundrum. Science concerns itself with the testing of objective truth. The way that each person perceives and interprets the data is often irrelevant, given that there is always a right answer which does not change. So, when you ask for "proof", do not think about whether you perceive it in the same way as someone else. Our universe functions based on objective truths.

I wouldn't say free will is a "practice", but rather a passive function of the human mind.

 

If you have the will to be free, then you do have free will, if you mindlessly follow some one, then you forfeit your will to another. And I cannot feel sorry for you.

 

My thoughts exactly - Many people respond to this notion defensively as if acknowledging we don't have free will somehow changes anything. We still act just as we did before, we just have a better appreciation for how amazingly complex the human mind is and maybe this will give us tools to control behavior (in a good way) instead of treating it has some mysterious thing, and as a consequence, labeling people based on their actions (good,evil,etc) rather than seeing those actions as just responses to their environment.

 

I argue that there is free will because I have a conscience. While it is nearly impossible to explain what consciousness is, I try to explain it as "being able to experience the world, not simply perceiving it." More than simply sharing files and 101010's, I experience myself making decisions with my conscience, which is free will. In other words, if we don't even have a conscience, then free will does not exist, yet because I do have a conscience, then free will must coexist with it.

Unfortunately, I believe that this leaves no room for determinism, where everything is able to be predicted. I say that we have choice over our lives.
Here is a simple diagram of many views on free will:

I am a Libertarianist.
Physicalism is very interconnected with determinism, as physicalism states that everything can be explained in the physical world. No mental states exist.
Unfortunately, until science can explain where consciousness is, I stay a believer in a nonphysical plane of existence, an indeterminist, and a believer that some higher being or mystical force exists.

Another interesting topic to point out is the philosophical zombie problem.
Read it here.
These zombies lack free will and consciousness, yet are indistinguishable from normal humans.
Unfortunately, I cannot know if anybody else has a conscience, due to the philosophical zombie problem. This is very dehumanizing.

I quote Wikipedia's paraphrase of one argument against physicalism:

1. According to physicalism, all that exists in our world (including consciousness) is physical.
2. Thus, if physicalism is true, a logically-possible world in which all physical facts are the same as those of the actual world must contain everything that exists in our actual world. In particular, conscious experience must exist in such a possible world.
3. In fact we can conceive of a world physically indistinguishable from our world but in which there is no consciousness (a zombie world). From this (so Chalmers argues) it follows that such a world is logically possible.
4. Therefore, physicalism is false. (The conclusion follows from 2. and 3. by modus tollens.)

Modus tollens means that because A implies B and ~B (~ means "not"), then by the Law of Contrapositive, ~B implies ~A. This contradiction shows that A cannot be true, and is therefore false.

I hope this all makes sense.

 

I have had the conversation about free will with many people in my life and have thought about it a lot even by myself... and at the end of the day it seems like almost an impossible question to answer because it's not really even defined properly.

What IS free will? how can we truly argue if we have it if we don't define what it is:
for instance, if free will is just defined as what a conscious person decides to do - then obviously free will exists. If free will is something more complex, something that exists outside of the physical laws, then I hold that it does not exist in such a way (by definition) since nothing can exist outside the physical laws that govern all of the universe.

Determinism Tangent:

Personally, I am a determinist, but honestly, I hold that as more of a philosophical opinion rather than some kind of physical truth. I believe, that if you know the location and trajectory of all energy and matter in the universe you could predict what would happen. What constitutes "the whole universe" is itself subject to intense debate among physicists around the world, but even if we knew what the limits of reality are it's practically impossible for humans to measure everything in the universe simultaneously - that would be like trying to measure the temperature of the ocean with nothing but a single handheld thermometer.

/end tangent

We can all make decisions; and if someone wants to call that "free will" that's fine with me - but whatever you call it, whenever we "choose" something, that is just the result of the chemical reactions in our brain, a brain formed by years of memories and influenced by our DNA blueprints. We have come a long way from the rest of the animal kingdom, we have developed abstract thoughts and built more and more advanced technology and societies... but we are still just a blob of mostly water and some organic chemicals that is born, has to learn and develop ethics and goals, and then we live out our lives constantly taking in new information that can be used to influence our decisions to make the best ones we can.