Free will vs. determinism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

There’s still a debate between free will and determinism regarding human life. I often try to envision how human life would be if free will or determinism applied to it, don’t you? Here’s what I came up with:

DETERMINISM: This means everything we do is determined, so there is no freedom. I tried to adopt this philosophy for a day and it was pretty much unsustainable (to me). Thinking that my life was determined no matter what I do is beyond my force. What’s the point in fighting, in getting up every morning, in trying to get promoted…? Yes, I might achieve my promotion. But what merit lies in it if it was determined to happen that way? This philosophy is deeply pessimistic in that it turns us, human beings, into puppets. It reminds me of people who say “We can’t change things”, “It’s not even worth trying”, etc. If scientists ever come up with a definitive answer regarding this question, it will be found in physics. No other science has the capacity to prove or disprove determinism in terms of empirical observation. W. Heisenberg made an astonishing discovery that was put forward in his principle of uncertainty. But careful! This discovery does not eliminate determinism! It only excludes the possibility for humans to be able to predict past and subsequent states using quantum mechanics. So determinism is still an option. However, my prediction is that if human life is governed by determinism, we will never be able to tell because if we were able to tell one day, we would immediately know the answers to everything since everything is determined. But the very same fact of being able to know everything would engender our irrevocable destruction. In other words, if we are determined, we’d rather not find out that we are. I guess that makes it easier for us to adopt free will.

FREE WILL: If human life is not completely determined -and I don’t care who is the agent of determinism (God, physical laws, Nature, spiritual substance…)-, then we have freedom to choose. This is less frustrating than determinism, but it is not a bed of roses either. Yes, with free will we would be in control of our lifes, which is a comforting thought. Remember what Neo says in ‘Matrix’ when Morpheus asks him if he believes in destiny? He answers ‘no’ because “I don’t like the idea of not being in control of my own life”. That is the good part of free will. We’re in control of our lifes. But free will comes at a price. It implies we’re responsible for our actions, and this responsibility is something many people find too challenging. If I fail my physics exam, for example, I will be confronted with responsibility. (Why didn’t I study last night instead of going into some disco with my friends?). And this is actually how we act in real life. We assume we are responsible for our own actions. I would say free will is a very suitable philosophy for people whose lifes were successful. However, a person confronted with a sense of responsibility for his or her own failures would experience freedom as a heavy burden.

I think this is one of the most interesting questions in philosophy because it can change entirely the way we approach things and people. What is your opinion? Do you think everything is determined or do we have choice?

2

You can either base your philosophy on flawed assumptions or on true ones.

Let’s assume there is such a thing as free will. This thing is not dependant on any event in the universe, since it’s free. How does it operate then? If you can explain how it does, you have failed because operation is deterministic.

We always have choices, but they are determined by circumstances.

3

There is already a thread on this.

But quickly:

The problems you are having with determinism come from the fact that you are approaching the evaluation of it from within a fundamentally ‘free will’ paradigm.

Determinism is distinct from fatalism.

You have to accept that at least some of the phenomenon you experience is determined. There are two categories of events; those which we have explained and those we have not. Those we have explained are causal, as it’s the only way we know to explain something. To conjecture on the rest is absurd, and so we have no room for free will.

Knowing that determinism is the case would not ‘give us all the answers’. Determinism, or some slight variation on it, is viable from reasoning alone. There may be indeterministic events, but they cannot govern the human mind, as under a passing scrutiny we find everything is causal.
(“Why did you pick x over z?” “because I liked x more” = a causal explanation).

We have the freedom to choose under determinism.

Under determinism we are still ‘responsible’ for our actions. Whenever we commit an action we have to face the inevitable consequences, in whatever form they take. To pretend that responsibility is anything other than responsibility to the reactions of objects or other people is to really step into the land of pixie dust and fairies. A person who thinks they are responsible but have free will (and therefore doesnt recognise the reasons for their bad choice) is going to be less succesful at changing their ways than a determinist.

I think this a rather poor argument, a very crude emotive characterisation.

4

i feel that there is will but it is not free. The mind can make choices, but once they are inacted by the body they become an operation which is by definition detirmined. You may have options but they are sevearly restricted by the body. Your life is in no way predetermined since we react to our changing enviroment and often the action the body intended does not play out. I believe in mental will (not free), and physical determinism.

5

We are complex machines, each tries to surive in his own way.
Nit-picking on words doesn’t mean much, and it’s useless for you all.
You’re free to make choices, but these depend greatly on your values system and moral identity. Be careful with what you want, because that’s what you’ll be looking at most of your life.

6

the ability to question is the essence of free will.

7

Or is a question just the path to understanding?

8

of course a question is a path to understanding.

and without the question…mechanics.

so then the question is " does pure mechanics lead to questions? no.

because the ability to question is not innate in pure mechanical actions.

9

Define pure mechanical actions.

How is it that you suppose the process of questioning arises? The moment you even attempt to focus on a “how”, a reason behind it at all, then there is a process you are searching for. How is this process not mechanical (causal)?

10

blankness.

from the potential mential ability of the life form to go beyond survival.

because the mechanical is blankness.

11

asbelowsoabove

What does it mean to make a choice?
Surely it means to weigh up the different alternatives, to go through a thought process that assigns value to each of the alternatives?
To paraphrase a friend of mine “too often people make a mistake in pondering determinism, and think themselves a free fly stuck in deterministic amber”.
Admittedly, you don’t say that you are free, but I don’t think you realise how all-pervasive deterministic processes are.
You say that our life is not predetermined since we react to our changing environment, and yet we carry with us our nature, which determines how we will react. When our nature interacts with the environment, both are altered. But if we ‘knew’ everything about the natures of our ‘self’ and the ‘environment’ then we would be able to extrapolate how they will interact in the future. (The problem here lies in the fact that making such a distinction as self opposed to environment is false. The self is an inherent part of the environment, and neither can be comprehended without the other).

dan

Again, this is an instance, I feel, of someone not comprehending the scope of determinism and causality.
They depend greatly on your values system and moral identity, and wholly upon something within your mind. We cannot escape our self.
Id = base desires, Super-Ego = desire to please people, Ego = desire to please something within the self. Nothing that I’ve yet noticed falls out of the scope of these three things, but if there is anything, it’s still certainly deterministic. Just try and make a choice. You will either think about what you’re picking, or you will have a ‘feel’ for which you most want to pick. If you go with the ‘feel’, then thats determinism in action. If you deliberaterly avoid the feel, then you are going with a thought process, and is yet again determinism in action. Because all action is definitionally causal and determined.

north

The ability to question is not excluded by determinism.

You are basing all of this on a false dichotomy.
There is not much that can be done about this, maybe you will realise your error in a few years.
The idea of causality does not necesarily mean cogs, and it does not necesarily mean physical, material objects. It can also be mental objects (Whether or not mental and physical objects are one and the same, or a number of other issues, is for another debate).

Can you not observe your own thought processes when making a decision? Do you not recognise how your desires and thoughts lead to you making choice?

Ok, lets for a moment define ‘mechanical’ as ‘blankness’.
What does this even mean? Once we have an undersstanding of what you mean, so we can have dialogue, you are next going to have to demonstrate that what you mean is the case.
Also, in the meantime, lets talk about causality. Causality is not ‘blank’, and we can consider it seperate from your concept of ‘mechanical’

12

Freewill means self determination and by self we are talking about the subject or cause of mental states, not mental states themselves or the conditions under which choices are made.

13

A strong empirical comeback from my British mate (I assume). But I must remember him philosophies are ways in which we approach life. Even if there’s no explication for what cannot be explained by the scientific method, I still look at free will and determinism as pretty plausible scenarios for the unexplainable.

I recognize the poverty of my arguments regarding this subject but it is a problem intrinsic to logic, mind, and language; it’s just impossible to determine how the three of them are affected by the other two. However, I admit you beat me in scientific reasoning. Strongly argued.

“We have the freedom to choose under determinism”.

That’s something I have to disagree with. Despite the conciliatory and dialectic nature of your assumptions, I find it pretty unlikely that a Universe completey determined might leave us the possibility of deciding what to do. However, the only way I can think of a synthesis such as you briefly summed up in your short statement is if human life is of no value at all. Tell me if I’m on the right path or I got lost somewhere. But if you re-introduce determinism under any of its forms and manifestations, you still can come up with a small chance of finding leeway for human matters. However, what good is that leeway of now that we’ve encapsulated the world into a leakless system of equations.

14

I’m not British, I’m Scouse :stuck_out_tongue:

True, but philosophies are also ways that we approach ‘ways-of-approaching-life’, and it is where we might get agreement on this that meaningful dialogue can occur.

If someone is willing to accept something as valid without certain criteria for it’s scrutiny, then I think there is not much room for communication.
If someone is willing to believe in a Christian God for faith (or reasons of preference or convenience) alone, then it will be impossible for me to talk to them.

Now, don’t get me wrong. While I am strong in my convictions that determinism is the right thing to believe in as evidence stands, I am not close-minded. I believe strongly in method. I believe in the conclusions that method produces only insofar as they continue to be coherent with the method.
I think that it is a reasonable set of criteria that I ask for, for there to be any belief in free will.
While I accept that some people will believe in something simply for the preference they hold for it, or desire for it, I would expect them to not put this forward as philosophically rigorous.

This all depends on what you mean by ‘choosing’ and ‘deciding’.
If you program a computer with a choice, then it will make a choice. It will weigh up the different options until assigning one the highest.
The computer has a choice, though it is determined which one it will make based on the ‘essence’ of it’s programming.
However, during the process of making the choice, weighing up the variables, it will not know which choice it is ultimately going to make. If it knew which choice it was ultimately going to make, it would not have to go through the process of wieghing the varaibles at all. Instantaneous computation seems an unlikely possibility.
Likewise, when we have a choice we have to go through the process of weighing the variables, and I think it is this process that most confuses people into thinking that ‘it could go either way’ as such.
As someone (Dr.Satanical I think) claimed, Free Will makes sense from a certain perspective. I do not think it makes sense from any perspective, but it is when we’re making the process of decision-making and by the nature of it cannot be aware of the outcome that I think it is most attractive as an illusion.

I did not mean to say that under determinism ‘it could go either way’, my point was rather that the process of making a choice can only be comprehended deterministically. What possible other form of process could lead to a meaningful choice?

Human life is of no ‘objective’ value. It doesn’t matter to the Universe whether we live or die, or what we do while we’re here.

Yes, there is a nonzero possibility.
But there is a nonzero possibility for literally anything.

I admit, determinism can at times feel like a straight-jacket. But it needn’t.

15

If we accept this as deterministic, then we also must accept this as free will. What happens to will if this doesn’t happen?

16

If that is free will, then is free will deterministic?

17

before there can be freewill there must exist that which has freewill…

“I” remains elusive…

-Imp

18

Interesting Imp,

You are a mystic who has shed ego?

19

If our thoughts and desires are determined, then we are determined. Or rather, we are formed through a deterministic process.

Is that clearer? :blush:

Does that mean you don’t have a choice? Of course not. It’s a description of formation.

If this is right, the question, “In a deterministic universe, how can we have free will?” no longer makes any sense in that the concepts of freedom and will are, well, inderterminate. :smiley:

20

no, I am a humean who understands that “I” is a bundle of experiences which have no logical connections between them… do “I” keep the illusion that “I” exists? of course… but I am aware of the illusory nature of it…

-Imp