Free will

In my personal opinion we do not have any free will. It seems to me that we have an illusion of free will. Our brains are machines and will spit out an outcome to any given circumstances. These machines could have been developed through birth or through enviornment, either way is irrelivent. At any point in time any given person has a certain personallity that will spit out a certain response to any certain circumstance. Our brains give us the illusion that we are thinking and choosing a certain response but that “thought process” is the machine processing the information.

Of course there is no free will.

Let’s not rush to judgment here. It’s a human thing, here’s the story:

Early folk gained self awareness and, over time, noticed each other dying and rotting away, found this to be distressing and thus invented a thingie (let’s call it ‘god’) that was perfect, all-knowing and all-powerful so that it could give them eternal life even before the rotting away process was completed. Except things kept getting screwed up in the human existence that this god had supposedly designed and oversaw, which created a credibility problem for him in terms of being powerful enough to give the humans the afterlife he’d been invented for in the first place. In other words, if he couldn’t get it right down here, what makes you think he’s going to be able to do squat for you after you die? So then the humans came up with ‘sin’ and choice. Thus it was because humans made ‘sinful’ choices (free will) that the bad stuff happened. And thus the suffering of humanity wasn’t the creator god’s fault, it was their own faults. Although there continued to be impertinent humans raising such pesky issues as ‘the problem of evil’ and the like, but they were doomed to the fires of hell, so who cared? The smart people (those who’d been infused with the spirit) knew that all that was necessary was to turn your ‘free’ will over to the god and follow his will instead. Thus free will arose as truth, god was exonerated and all was well on earth and, even if it sucked sometimes, or a lot of the time, there was always the guarantee of heaven.

So free will exists to the extent that god does. You may do with this explanation as you choose. :slight_smile:

I’m not sure how “free” it is, but there is definitely something called will. Given that we make choices with long-term benefits or rewards instead of choice made by short term impulse, at least part of the time, suggests something called will. Depending on one’s perspective, this can be considered a “free” choice.

I have declared myself to be on a diet. The dessert cart comes to the table. A short term impulse and immediate reward is to have the chocolate cake with raspberry syrup. This would be breaking my diet and could possibly prevent me from obtaining my used-to-was slim girlish figure. I must make a choice between short-term reward of scarphing chocolate cake and the long term possibility of a thinner healthier me. If there were no such thing as free will, there would be absolutely no point in selecting a long term reward, and I would always select the immediate reward.

Is there any such thing as absolute free will? Of course not. One would then be the God Ingenium mentioned. But the fact that free will has human limitations doesn’t make it any less free.

If you take full responsibility for all of your choices and actions then you grant yourself the power of free will.

Even if some “choices” are made for long term prospects, I still can’t see why they must be considered less determined than short term impulses. If I opt against smoking a fag all we can deduce is that the drive or will to health is presently stronger than the drive or will to a quick fix. While short-sighted hedonism is often linked with one’s “irrational” side and long-sighted concerns with one’s “rational” side, I feel there is no reason to judge oneself as less determined by one (i.e. the passions) than the other. Whether ruled by reason or desire, charges of determinism render prospects for the will equally bleak.

Free will certainly is a fact of human existence. Any action one takes, could not have been taken. Certainly there are influences in our decisions and actions, but ultimately we choose how we act.

No human action ‘had to be.’

But the question is whether or not that choice is free. We all make choices, and by that I mean do one thing out of many alternatives, but the important thing is if this choice is free i.e. uncaused by external “agents”.

If it can be show that a person’s behaviour can be predicted/controlled in a particular situation does this not show that their behaviour is not free/uncaused?

What an ironic start to this post. Surely you meant to start with, “According to what my brain is spitting out…”

To the extent that the only available definition of will is determinism then you are correct. Which brings the question, why ask the question at all if there is but one possible conclusion? If will only comes in one color, then there isn’t a question, merely a statement of fact. Questions with only one possible answer aren’t questions.

But one can know from direct observation, (in this case introspection) that no matter what the influences surrounding any person or any situation, one can still choose among the alternatives.

A person is free to be influenced or not.

Yes you can choose and that’s what I said, but the important thing is whether or not that choice free.

If you could reliably control a persons behaviour/choice in a given situation does that not show that the choice is not free?

Regarding the “introspection”. Do you really think this is a good method for telling what’s going on? How do you know that you have all the variables to decide that the choice you make is free or not?

You are genetically determined to behave in certain ways simply by being alive. Is you choice free when you sneeze? When your pupils dilate? When your hair stands on end? Is a baby free to choose the environment that it grows up in?

We don’t lead our lives in a science lab. Behavior is always caused by something…beliefs, desires, needs. The ‘free’ part, IMO, is that there is continuing variability in our environment as we face choices. There is also continuing variability in how we view things, and we’re free to change that view any time and, therefore, make a different decision than we would have if faced with the choice last year, or even yesterday. It may be a good choice, or it may be a bad one, but the ability to make it is there. As we move through ‘time’, we and everything around us are in constant flux, things are coming together and then falling apart. So you can’t predict what a choice down the road is going to be because it’s impossible to predict the outcomes of all other events that will influence the environment within which the choice will be made. At best you can only hypothesize that given certain conditions, the choice will likely be such-and-such. It’s of course possible to influence events depending upon how much control you have. For example, if you own a business and tell employees they won’t get paid if they don’t come to work, you’ll influence their attendence. But no outcome can be guaranteed, an employee may get sick or have an accident or quit.

It makes absolutely no difference where the person is. Either man can make free choices or he can’t, this does not suddenly change if the situation is contrived.

But you are simply asserting that “we’re free to change that view any time”. How are we? If that change of view has been “influenced” by the environment, to the extent that it is certain that the person will change their view, then surely this shows that the change of view has not originated from the person but from the environment. Hence the “change of view” is not free.

Are you therefore saying that if you could predict what the environment will be like “down the road” then you could predict what the choice will be?

If the environment is left uncontrolled and you have no history of the person then it is obviously going to be difficult to predict what someone is going to do in a given situation. This, however, does not make it true that the person’s behaviour is free.

My whole point is that if you have control over the environment of a person then you will have control over their behaviour and will be able to predict/control it.

And what if you test that hypothesis and every result is as you have predicted?

So what does this mean?

I reject the first two examples. It would be like saying that a doctor cannot guarantee that these prescribed drugs will cure a person as that person may get run over by a bus 2 seconds after having taken them.

The point about quitting is the whole point of what I am saying. If you know the past environmental history of the employees then you will be able to predict if they will quit or not.

I was just using this as a contrast to characterize the environment ‘man’ really lives in. In any event, all decisions made depend on view of the environment, and that is something that is constantly in flux.

I don’t know ‘how’, other than as I already described it. I only know that we do change view. It’s the nature of the mind. If we didn’t ever do this, you could conclude that it’s because we’re not able to for some reason.

I don’t think that certainty exists, and it’s not provable anyway. My point was that there is continuing variability in view and if anyone’s going to claim ‘free will’, then this is where it would have to lie. (I happen to think fw is illusory, but I’m just addressing the idea of ‘freedom’ in terms of making choices.) We know this variability exists both from observing ourselves and from observing others. The fact that time has passed and environment has changed and that this will influence view to some degree isn’t so much the point. It’s the degree of variability in our view that allows us flexibility.

I’m saying this ‘down the road’ possibility doesn’t exist, so that particular line of inquiry is fruitless. Even if it did exist, there’s still no guaranteed if-then relationship.

I’m not characterizing it that way. I’m claiming that there is flexibility in view, because view of the environment is not the actuality of the environment, it’s only a perception of it, an illusion, something that’s presumed to be real, substantial and true, but that’s actually without the stability of permanence or any intrinsic substantiality. Thus flexibility is a characteristic of view.

You can exercise some control, but the uncertainty always remains.

It’s not a science lab, remember? :slight_smile:

Exactly what it says.

We’re talking in this thread about choices, not events. So perhaps an accident wasn’t the best example for not coming to work, but some people go to work sick when they don’t get sick leave benefits. Others don’t. The point is that employees retain choice, even if it isn’t all that great.

You’ve obviously never had employees, lol.

Point #1

The question of free-will is a fundamental one and a favorite topic for all philosophical minds and introspective psychologies.

Yet, to me, the very concept is burdened with a contradiction.

Freedom is independence and denotes an absolute.
So, freedom, in any complete state would be the absolute independence from everything.
Thusly what would it need and what would such a state Will?

The concept of Will is one denoting a drive towards or a need a desire, a fulfillment of an absence.

Point #2

It seems to me that consciousness depends on abstracting, from a small amount of sensual material, general concepts and future occurrences.
This implies that consciousness always lags behind existence, as the mind abstracts the experience into tangible piece that it can then analyze and store as memory or knowledge.
For this reason Determinists suppose that all is predetermined because they become aware of what is after the fact.
No matter what happens they believe it has been preordained because they experience it after it has already occurred.

Nevertheless it seems undeniable that a conscious mind is the sum of its past; it carries with it the history, experiences and genetic predispositions of its entire history of Becoming.
Its reactions and demeanor is already established.
But this does not deny the possibility that a conscious becoming will uses its self-awareness and its sum of its own past to establish a divergence.

For me the Will act as a forerunner, the tip of Becoming, interacting and reacting to the world and to other Wills – it is a spirit of Becoming as it has been established by its entire past.
It then experiences this, after the fact, as being preordained.

We cannot deny determinism as the concept of contingency. That which is contingent is not free.

Therefore we must redefine free-will as the Will that overcomes its own past and establishes a new one, in relation to the multiple other Wills that confront it and affect it.
So, when we talk about free-will we are talking about degrees of it and not of an absolute. In fact the Will is that which seeks its own freedom, its own absolution and completion.

This overcoming of one’s past, also implies a constant reinvention, a willful forgetfulness, as a mind remains a child in every instance of its own Becoming.

But a person’s “view” does not originate from within the person. Can you just change your “view” of something whenever you want? A person is not causing their “view” to be “constantly in flux”, it is the environment.

If I were to start apologising for being a fool and conceding all your points then your “view” of me would change. But it is my behaviour, not yours, that has caused this change of “view” i.e. your environment.

If you compare it to natural selection. Would you say that a species is free to choose what they would evolve into in the future? You cannot predict what their environment will be like in the future so you cannot say what that species will evolve into, so you must conclude that this implies that their evolution is free.

I would say that you can control the environment and therefore control how an organism will evolve. An example would be selective breeding in dogs. Therefore, the organism is not free to evolve into whatever species they want as it can be show that they evolve into whatever species the environment “wants”.

The fact that an uncontrolled environment produces unpredictable results says nothing of the “freeness” of an organism in that environment, it simply shows that an uncontrolled environment leads to unpredictable results, nothing more.

You can argue that this unpredictability can be construed as an organism being free but I think this just confuses the matter and doesn’t really add anything.

paulend,

While you tacitly acknowledge the continuity of changing patterns of behavior, you also present behavioral choices as a collection of static and knowable facts. Ingenium has elegantly re-phased the statement that “you cannot step into the same river twice.” All experience is a constant interaction with everything within one’s immediate view. Thus, all experience is new, novel, and conditional. As Satyr suggests, memory, genetic tendencies, what we had for lunch, may provide a predisposition toward certain predictable actions, but one may always say or not.

What is called free will is always conditioned by both the internal and external environment. Unless your definition of free is to be entirely without any external sensing of any form, and as Satyr asked, what then would be the point of will at all?

It doesn’t? There is no ‘view’ but from a perspectival point, and that point is me. If experience is processual, then not only does our interactions change moment to moment, but also our perspective. All experience is new, and in that, the potential for choices not predicted.

First, I just want to clarify what I mean by the term “view” (and I only used the word as it had already been used by Ingenium) as it seems that you are using it differently to me. You seem to be using it in the visual sense, e.g. “the whole of the horizon was in his view”. Correct me if I am wrong but this seems correct when you compare it to when you said “All experience is a constant interaction with everything within one’s immediate view”.

I am not using “view” in this sense, as I thought would be clear when I said “If I were to start apologising for being a fool and conceding all your points then your “view” of me would change. But it is my behaviour, not yours, that has caused this change of “view” i.e. your environment”. By me saying this I do not mean that Ingenium’s visual view of me, i.e. what’s in front of his face, all of a sudden changes.

What I am using the term “view” to mean in “view of me” (and I don’t really want to use this term either) is “opinion” -of me. i.e. the likelyhood that he will behave in a given way relative to me.

I am unsure as to what you mean by this so it would be good if you could clarify.

(I think that may have been a typo at the end when you said “but one may always say or not” which I will take to mean that the person can still make a choice even though they have all these “predisposition[s]”.)

But this is the whole point! You are just restating the problem that we are talking about. I could have said “memory, genetic tendencies, what we had for lunch, may provide a predisposition toward certain predictable actions, but we still do not have a free choice at the end” but that adds nothing because the “but we still do not have a free choice at the end” is simply an assertion.

I addressed this when I said “The fact that an uncontrolled environment produces unpredictable results says nothing of the “freeness” of an organism in that environment, it simply shows that an uncontrolled environment leads to unpredictable results, nothing more” i.e. “unpredictable” does not equal “uncaused” or “free”.

Again, I tried to make this clear with my natural selection analogy. You do not know what the environment will be like in the future, therefore, from what you are saying, you will not be able to predict what a species will evolve into. Does this mean then, that animals’ evolution is free/uncaused?

Sure, but that’s only if determinism were true. I think it is, but live my life as though I have free will. We cannot help but do so, another case where philosophical reflection contrasts sharply with day-to-day assumptions. That’s the fun - or torture - of it. So I continue asking such questions in hope that they are real questions. Then again, aren’t they still genuine questions, if determinism were true. Must the inevitability of answers of such “questions” preclude their accuracy or truth? In other words, although determinism (supposedly) undermines the preferred notion of the self, conclusions reached, I feel, must not necessarily face such undermining.