I have this doubt if each one of us is really endowed with such free will. I think it really doesn’t exist. I think every action we make is influenced by the environment around us. The environment is the one who takes control on us which prohibits us from such freedom. 
You’re completely right, we don’t really have any free will at all. This is caused by the lack of unity in us. From moment to moment we are really a whole different set of people that act differently and have different beliefs. The existence of these many selves is very apparent if we observe ourselves throughout a normal day. We don’t see it unless we look for it because we have learned to specifically ignore these contradictions to prevent upsetting inner conflict. Because of this, we are completely mechanical, and cannot really do anything out of free will. Everything that happens to us is an accident.
The most straightforward and in my mind most convincing argument for determinism runs thus:
where any event in nature is E
where N is an antecendant state of nature
And L is a constant law of nature;
Given L, N will be followed by E.
thus any event is governed by the preceeding states of nature and the unchanging laws of nature, thus no ‘free’ event can take place.
Harsh but true, i believe.
Also one must note we are all bound by space and time. So that in retrospect givin the same circumstances and the same character man will always make the same choice.
But I disagree with absolute determinism. I believe man has a very limited freewill.
Heres an analogy that I really liked which was posted by nevskey1: in the thread http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=140100&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
I personally feel that our freewill is at the moment where we choose to either accept or reject a thought or idea that enters our consiousness. For the one thing which we have control over is how we think. This in turn determines how we act or react to the circumstances.
What we do not have control over though are the thoughts that enter our consiousness, we only have control over rejecting or accepting these thoughts and perhaps adding on a peice of ourselves to them through our own personal reasoning which has been influenced by each individuals unqiue expriences.
Also note man is more then just an animal with instincts. We have the ablity to choose to go against our prime carnal instincts in order to attain spiritual ends. This may be to what our freewill is limited to, pursuing our animal impulses or our spiritual goals.
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek dicipline and find your liberty”
I think audioslave says it best-
I met a man locked away
For things he hadn’t done
Innocence on a ball and chain
He’ll never feel the sun
Again on his face or roses
In his hands but when he smiled
At me I could understand
(chorus)
If you’re free you’ll never see the walls
If you’re head is clear you’ll never free fall
If you’re right you’ll never fear the wrong
If you’re head is high you’ll never fear at all
There was a daughter of a man
Who took his life too young
She swore she’d never do the same
Then did just what he’d done
And a boy who’s gone insane
Voices in his head
No one knows what they say
Now his mothers dead
(chorus)
If you’re free you’ll never see the walls
If you’re head is clear you’ll never free fall
If you’re right you’ll never fear the wrong
If you’re head is high you’ll never fear at all
There was a man who had a face
That looked a lot like me
I saw him in the mirror and
I fought him in the street
And when he turned away
I shot him in the head
Then I came to realize
I had killed myself
(chorus)
If you’re free you’ll never see the walls
If you’re head is clear you’ll never freefall
If you’re right you’ll never fear the wrong
If you’re head is high you’ll never fear at all
This is what i personally believe in.
Like all the other philosophy problems, it’s always a no-brainer to define the concept first 
Free will means a human’s ability to do things at his own command, right?
Let’s say a guy is trying to grab an orange. The first thing is his desire to reach for the object. His desire for the fruit might be due to his upbringing or genes, non of which he had control over. So his desire is determined, but there’s still one step between his desire and the action. Before his decision, he can make the conciouss choice to deny his desire and leave the fruit, or go with his desire and grab it. But is a conciouss decision really at his free will? Supposedly the decision happens in neurons. Thoughts turn into neural signals, and signals go the fists to open it. What if the neurons suddenly experience a malfunction due to some blood problem? This is determined by nature, you cant command your viens. SO now your neurons dont work and you cant grab the orange, even at your conciouss decision. Does this mean free will doesnt exist?
Mankind has the ultimate freedom, whether he likes it or not.
Man’s ability to reason gives him freewill. Granted, social setting, and cultural background affect a human’s thought process, but in the end he has the ability to reject these things, if he recognizes them.
No matter how hungry a human is, s/he can still chose to leave the orange.
There might be a twist to this. You may have free will to grab the orange, but there are only two options: either take the orange or not take it. There is no third alternative. That is, by denying one option, you are automatically forced to choose the other. Maybe orange isnt a good example. In other situations, you only have certain choices. Isnt that somewhat deterministic?
You are living in an illusion 
. What we choose, when we choose and how we choose depends on our experience. Reason can only choose between the experience we have. Thats why some are criminals, they do not have the same experience as us, so they can’t make the same choices as us. To not be criminal, that is.
And btw, reason is created by evolution. Our mind has changed.
The feeling of being trapped is a major sign of depression…
I didn’t choose to like blond hair girls, I didn’t choose to be white, I didn’t choose what food taste great. This was all predetermined for me by something I have never seen.
The feeling of being trapped is a major sign of depression…
I didn’t choose to like blond hair girls, I didn’t choose to be white, I didn’t choose what food taste great. This was all predetermined for me by something I have never seen.
Exactly by virtue of having a sex you allready notice the lack of freewill.
You can choose to eat half of the orange.
I was not born with wings. I do not have the ability to fly. Does this meen I do not have freedom? What do you define as freedom then, omnipotence? Godhead?
Freewill is the ability to determine your own actions, within the limits of your situation and ability-granted, but other forms of life do not have the ability to choose. Animals can only act according to instinct and conditioning. Plants can only act acording to the location of sun and water. Humans can go beyond these boundries, but there are limits to all things. I think it is you, Highwind, that is living with illusion the illusion that you don’t have control over your own life. That’s a difficult illusion to overcome, because it is much easier to think it’s not your fault, there’s nothing you can do, it was how you were born.
Just because it is easier, doesn’t make it true.
^^i dont think your understanding the determinist argument. you acknowlage that plants and animals can only act in their nature, but you put humans in a new catagory that exeeds what is typical in nature and is capable of ‘free’ descision
your thinking too much of our species. our intellect allows us to reflect on what were doing and that gives the illusion of choice and reason, but unless you believe you have a soul or some kind of divine spirit, what ‘you’ are, your knowledge of self, consciousness (say, the ‘I’ in the cogito) is nothing more than bio-chemical reactions and electric impulses in your brain. how can you be seen as ‘in control’ of the very thing that controls you? as in, what makes things happen in your body: the said chemical reactions?
im trying to make the problem simple, because it isnt a very appealing notion and so people find it hard to accept, because they see themselves as something special - something unique in nature. we may be top of a ladder, but where all made from the same stuff, and although our language allows us to communicate our idea’s that gives rise to this pompus ‘Humans are capable of so much more’ attitude; as you so quaintly put it, doesnt make it true.
And finally, after all is said and done, there is one thing and one thing only that you have under your control.
Everything but this one thing is subject to hindrance from externals outside your control.
The one thing?
Work it out yourself slave!
There’s no point in me telling you for you wont listen and you wont hear.
My action of eating was predetermined by me being hungry, then shiting was and effect of me eating.
Sometimes I think free will might be true to an extent but then again we might just be puppets.
Hello Thoutoyoureye,
It’s a mistake to inquire about human values from a nonhuman vantagepoint; an error Thomas Nagel made famous as, “the view from nowhere.”
We aren’t special because we’re made of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and the like. Neither would my life be more important if my body were made of diamonds. Nor must we possess a mysterious soul, an elan vital or any such pixie dust in order that our matter matters. A human is made of the same stuff as makes a compost heap. Likewise, a Stradivari violin is made of the same stuff as police clubs; yet an instrument for cracking skulls is functionally unlike an instrument for melting hearts. The value of human life is an emergent property. To look for human value among its constituent physical parts would be like looking for the beauty of a Bach violin partita by examining its individual notes in random order.
Human life is precious because we say it is. This self-generation of value is a regenerative, bootstrapping process. A Being that values its life, elevates the very thing which is assigning the value. Such positive feedback-loops tend towards a saturation of value; which is precisely where I find myself. My life is of immense importance despite the fact that it has no value to a stone, to a galaxy, or to the universe as a whole.
Imagine a world in which you think the stones consider you a God, and yet you think of yourself as having less important than a grain of dust. I prefer a converse world - this world - where the stones think nothing of me, but where people are enormously important because I love them. In this world I matter because I’m eminently worthy of my own love, and because others have come to love me.
“Man lives below the senseless stars and writes his meanings in them.” – Thomas Wolfe
Regards,
Michael
William Morris suggested the British Houses of Parliament might be more useful as a large muck barn - or did he suggest that politics and politicians were of as much use as compost?
Oh yeah, I’d say there was a good deal more, ‘art,’ in the Stradivarius violin than the truncheon. And surely, to reduce art to, ‘pixie dust,’ is to hate and despise your fellow humans?
You may well see yourself as nothing more than compost or horse manure but some of us see the human being as more than mere matter. I’m sure you really meant to say, ‘the body,’ is made of the same stuff as makes a compost heap.
You wouldn’t even be aware of your body without your sprinkling of pixie dust!
But you have the free will not to eat. You would die, yes, but that is your choice to make.
Further, you have the free will to use a toilet, or to go outside and squat in a bush, or just crap your pants. Animals do not have these choices, they just shit wherever they happen to be standing when the need hits them.
Exactly right. Greater than the sum of its parts.
It’s true that the human brain is made up of the same stuff as a pile of manure, but the side effect of having a brain is having a mind and consciousness, whereas the only side effect of a pile of manure is stink.
while i wouldnt deny that humans are admirable in their qualities, and it is infinitely more prefrable to see oursleves as special which we are it doesnt detatch from the fact we are but a vessel of nature, and are thus bound to its dicourse which means that in the truest sense of the word, we are determined.
the guy above me, something something the wise, if there is more to the body than matter, what is that substance, and what experience do you have of its reality?
you daft dualist.