Hi everyone,
I’m new here. Anyway, let me get to my question. What do you think evolution / natural selection means for free will?
My view is that there cannot be free will in an evolutionist / natural selection worldview.
??? What would lead you to think that?
Well, i said ‘my view’ but I suppose it is under scrutiny of course.
The way I would see it, is that man is directed by nature. Not by choice. He didn’t choose to evolve, nature evolved him (I am speaking loosely, I guess.) He didn’t choose to be the predominant species. Nature directed it that way. Even if it was by pure chance, it was because of natural selection not because of choice.
Even if you had to say “No, man WANTED to be the most intelligent species” the question in my brain is “Why?” The answer, from a natural selection point of view, is that it is necessary for evolution and to become the highest and most surviving species (Right?) Therefore, all of man’s will is influenced by what nature demands and expects. All his thinking is directed by nature, he can’t think outside or anything other than what nature allows him to. He can never have a thought that is ‘other than’ the box of nature and nature’s own purposes.
Hope that makes sense. Thoughts?
Hi rain. What you’re saying makes sense, but I disagree with it.
This is true.
Man definitely didn’t choose to be most intelligent in the early stages of evolution, but there did reach a certain point in mankind’s evolution where we discovered our ability to communicate thoughts and ideas with one another. Complex thoughts and ideas. And as we found more and more ways to store the information for these ideas and supply the masses with it, the more we yearned to continue discovering the world around us, simply because we could, unlike any other animal on the planet.
As for a thought other than the box of nature, I certainly don’t think nuclear fusion was a thought process nature ever intended. Nor HTML coding. Superconducting electromagnets. The list goes on.
But why is this development of complex thoughts and ideas not a result of nature? It must be. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have gotten to that point. I mean to say, complex thoughts would not even exist were it not for nature.
I would disagree on the point that all of these things ARE in fact, the result of, and because of, the study and manipulation of nature.
In other words, let’s take a computer as an example. If we break my laptop down into smaller pieces, we end up with nothing but rubble of natural resources. Copper, sand etc. The fact that we can put these natural resources together with something that was not originally “there” is really not exactly that amazing (if you ask me) because we still are not able to ‘create’ those natural resources we actually need. In fact, you could say that the computer was always ‘there,’ we just never understood nature well enough to know what we could do with it.
Why should a laptop be seen as ‘not nature’ when it is actually comprised of nature?
Why are complex ideas not the result of nature? It must be, after all, if we are natural beings. Also, complex ideas take place ‘within’ nature - our thoughts are not found within a seperate realm, they’re found within our brain therefore within what nature has given us.
Well that’s like saying my McDonald’s hamburger is just as natural as the apple you picked from your tree in your backyard. When you get down to the atomic level, technically speaking everything in this world/universe is natural. There is no overlying power controlling and directing the natural world. The world is a series of random events that are completley unpredictable.
Nothing would exist if it were not for nature. I would agree our complex thoughts are a result of nature but that does not say anythign about our free will. Just because we are a result of nature doesn’t mean nature controls us. Humans have evolved past that point where we are no longer in control. We are the only living being on this planet that is not controled 100% by nature. Humans have evolved to the point where we are able to control our instincts. For example, animals have mating seasons. They don’t know why they mate, they don’t even have the ability to question that, they just do it. Humans on the other hand make that decision; there is nothing controlling that decision for us. It is completley up to us. Because we have can make that decision, we have free will.
I agree.
In the future you may want to do a poll, then even people who don’t leave a message can click on a quick “yes/no” answer.
I would have clicked “Yes”.
Anyway, my own approach to freewill is that it is controlled by the laws of physics, but “nature” I can see as basically the same thing. 
Natural selection will be replaced by intelligent selection.
But the concept of free will has never been applied to the way we are born. Nobody would ever have suggested that we freely choose that, except perhaps believers in reincarnation. And the way we are born – our genetic makeup – is all that natural selection shapes.
Free will means that we (as we are, however that occurred) face choices of action in which our ability to choose one course over another is not illusory. A position that denies free will would say that we actually are completely determined in our choices by our heredity and/or the environmental factors shaping our personality, so that we have in reality only one possible choice in any given set of circumstances. It has nothing to do with evolution. The denial of free will could be – in fact, has been – made just as readily by people who believe we were shaped not by evolution but by God. John Calvin, for example.
The best argument in favor of free will resides IMO in modern physics. We recognize in the synaptic activity that leads to a choice, a chaotic system that preserves the indeterminacy of quantum-level events. That being the case, our choices should be (in principle) unpredictable, and therefore in some degree free. Again, though, this has nothing to do with evolution.
I guess it comes down to whether or not you believe in emergent properties.
Much as I hate to admit it, I think I’m gonna have to backpeddle on my previous dislike of them. Too much evidence for them.
Pity, I liked my reductionist worldview. But it doesn’t seem to model reality as well as I would like.
I still see a flaw here. We don’t have a decision but to procreate in some way. I could say philosophically that because we can’t choose whether or not we’re going to die, we don’t have a true free will. But I may be taking it a little too far then.
To bring it back to the real world, again, how do you know that your choice to have a baby or not is not dependent on instinct (to reproduce) or instinct (to self-preserve?)
You mean to say nature is intelligent?
I understand. Thanks I’ll talk about free-will in a less broad shape then.
My point would be, I think, that you don’t get to choose your choices. If nature gives you a genetic makeup that is deformed, you have to face a different set of choices. If it gives you a genetic-makeup of superman, once again you have a different set of choices (such as, don’t use your powers for evil )
Your choices are given to you because of nature’s randomness. You rely on it making a random change in your favour. I agree this is too broad for ‘free will’ in the sense of the original concept, in one sense. But in another sense, I think it fits in.
You live your life still dependent on instinct and not on anything else but instinct. Because you can choose which instinct to follow or do, doesn’t mean you are free from your instinct. Your life is more complex than an animal’s, but nevertheless dependent on instinct as an animal.
I think it does have to do with evolution (at least, atheist evolution.) Why? well, we don’t choose our choices. Your choices in life are given to you because of your hereditary. Why do I say that? Because if you’re born in America or in China, you’re faced with different choices to make. You don’t have the choice to eat Macdonalds if you’re born in Mozambique South Africa. These are social factors, yes, but social factors are born from nature not the other way around. (Why? Well, nature ‘decides’ who’s black and who’s white. Do our instincts cause us to dislike a group of people that are not our own? Certainly, this is what evolution would imply.)
Environmental factors shape our personality, too. We only have one possible choice when given choices, but you didn’t decide what choices you were going to be given.
I know Calvin’s view. (but we can leave that up to the religious forum )
I’m not a physician, so I don’t want to speak out of term. But, your leading to choices was dependent on an instinct. If they are unpredictable, surely that works in my argument’s favour? But whether they are or are not, how do you know that your genetic makeup given to you (from nature) doesn’t make you favour (choose) one instinct over another?
I’ll agree that mankind is limited to a certain number of choice sets when it comes to decision making, simply because we’re not capable of infinite things. But I think the number is growing.
There’s some debate in medical and biological circles as to whether human beings have instincts. Myself, I think the idea that we don’t is a silly prejudice left over from belief that humans weren’t animals. It seems to me that baby-talk shows an instinct to develop language, and this gives us our remarkable ability to learn language so quickly. (The first one, anyway.) But I’m not an expert on instincts, so maybe that isn’t really one.
Anyway, having instincts, if we do, doesn’t mean we don’t have free will. Free will only means that our choices aren’t completely determined. Our circumstances, together with our biological nature and our personalities as shaped both by biology and by environmental factors, do limit what choices we can make. But in all cases, we have more than one choice available. They might not be the same choices someone else would have, but the choices are still multiple, and that means we have free will.
The only arguments against free will – some theological, others psychological or biological – hold that what choice we will make in any given circumstance is predetermined. Theological determinism (such as Calvin’s) holds that God ordains the choices we make. Psychological determinism holds that our conditioning and/or our biological nature makes it impossible for us to make any choice but one.
Are you suggesting, then, that because we are animals, because we have instincts, or at least drives, we cannot make actual choices?
If this is so, we are still evolving.
By the way, myself writing from Africa means that for some I think the number is shrinking. But that’s for another discussion
Yes.
Our choices are determined by our ‘instinctal drives’ so to speak. Our ‘instinctal drives’ are determined by genetic coding, ‘given’ to us by nature by pure chance. So, that’s why i’m saying, we don’t really have free will.
I think this makes sense to my argument then. Do you know where I could research these arguments more? I’d like to really take a look at this subject.
My point is that our choice is ‘predetermined’ because we only make choices based on our stronger instinct, whatever and however complex that instinct may be. It is determined by nature, if we look back at the chain of cause here.
There is a difference between our choices being influenced by our nature, and our choices being determined by them. Only in the latter case do we not have free will.
A person comes to a fork in the road. She can go left or right. Her nature inclines her to go left.
Is it 100% certain that she will go left? Can we look at all the factors pertaining to this situation that are in principle knowable, and predict her choice with absolute certainty?
If so, then she has no free will.
If not, then she does.
Since her choice is the product of a chaotic system which is inherently not predictable, I say that she does.
Assuming that having children is a choice that every intelligent person is bound to make (and succeed in).
Navigator wrote:
I agree. Free will describes symbolic thinking; our ability to consider the past and future, and use language.
There is “thinking” as in the brain reacting to perceptions: Being aroused by a fit looking female causes the male to pursue her without considering how he is going to act.
Then there is symbolic thought: “thinking” (in the sense of the mind, not the brain) which, using it’s free will, considers that, although his coworker Linda is certainly begging for sexual attention, financial security is far too important to risk a sexual harrasment suit.
TheRan wrote:
So I am assuming you would regard the pursue of financial security, or any other drive to live “the good life” stems from our basic drive to survive, get food, etc, or a more mammalian drive to have relationships, and so forth?
So when you say “instinct” you are really refering to “wants,” whether these wants are directly primal (hunger, lust) or symoblically linked to primal urges (for ex: financial security so one can live and feel more confidant in pursuing females)?
However, not all wants stem from a primal survival or sexual instinct. Example: altruism. I am not arguing altruism can be intrinsically selfish (“I understand life is valuable, I’ve been taught it is important. If I see that somebody is in danger, I have to help them; if not, I simply wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”)
Symbolic thought creates ideals that move away from simply preserving oneself and giving in to one’s primal urges.
The care that mammals feel, and the human relationships that stem from them, ARE instincts for us, at this point. If you see that someone is about to get hit by a car, you freeze up, or you yell at then immediately–nonetheless, you are shocked yourself! The life of another person DOES effect us (as long as their isn’t too much psychic distance, whether due to location or the perception of the person belonging to an outgroup opposing your ingroup).
You say “it is caused by nature” but what does this actually mean?
What ISN’T caused by nature? Man came from nature, so he is nature itself, no matter how dysfuntional at this time.
I think you are taking the word “nature” too seriously… the world is used in different ways. It obviously comes from “natural,” but what is “natural?”
I understand that you can argue that with every act someone does, it is natural. Yes, they may think about their decision a great deal, under the specific circumstances, and come up with a well thought out reply but, nonetheless, their reply stems from the beliefs they have which are based off their their opnions of the different experiences thery have been through, the things they’ve been told, all the way down to the basic drives that may be linked to those actions.
You can argue that every decision a person makes is merely a complex calculation based off what is inside their brain and the way their brain works.
I can’t deny that this may be the case.
But “free will” is your ability to choose.
If you simply do what other members of a group you identify with do, you are not using your own free will, you are using the free will of the group (which is usually so ingrained and automatic that it is not free-will at all, it is mindless behavior).
Again, you may argue that a human will only move into a state of using their own free will to consider their behaviors–actually act according to thought, not so much a reaction to accepted norms–when they are ready to do so.
My point is that all humans have this ability to use free-will, whether or not they do so, or understand how to.
Most people are still very, very ape-like (and this works out great for those making money off of these mindless, automated actions. It is desirable for those in power to keep the masses accepting shallow norms of action and pursuing meaningless goals).