(Forewarning: I am new to this site and have read very little of the content besides the rules of the forum. Thus, I will not be properly implementing those inevitable odds and ends of etiquette which I am confident abound here as they do in most communities. If I like it around here, however, I will strive to educate myself on the ways of this place and, for such reason, will gladly accept friendly pointers from you the more experienced members of the community. Thanks.)
I want to probe a bit into the atheistic/agnostic community. I assume you all are out there…
If you are either an atheist or agnostic, do you believe in free will?
So you are aware, I’m looking to begin a discussion. In that vein, if you respond to this, I will likely follow up with further questions.
Finally, I pass no judgment on any other human’s belief system. I may find another belief system flawed (presumably I would have to find it flawed unless it mirrored my own), but that is not a bad thing, it’s just the way things are. I believe I can learn and further hone my own belief system by discussing the differences between mine and those of other humans, and this is why I pursue these kinds of discussions.
Ha! You think your own belief system is flawless? Can’t wait to hear it.
Can’t really respond to your request since I’m a theist. But as for free will, I think it exists, I just don’t think it deserves to be called “free”. There is will, or choice, or the ability to influence your own life and the world around you, but freedom is something else altogether.
Just to clarify, I don’t think my belief system is flawless. However, I do not think there are any beliefs out there which other humans are holding which are better than my own, corresponding beliefs. If I did, I would have adopted those better beliefs already and they would now be part of my belief system. This kind of adoption and evolution of my belief systems is something that has gone on my whole life; as I think is true for most of us.
What is accurate about your criticism, however, is that my statement seems to imply that when I run across a human with a different different belief than some belief I hold, I presume that mine is correct and the other human’s is wrong. And that’s probably wrong of me. I should actually assume that neither is correct until I’ve analyzed them both and come to a more informed decision.
So, to that degree, I stand corrected.
Very interesting. Let me ask this then: do you think that people deserve things (punishments, rewards, etc…)? Do you think a murderer deserves some punishment (exactly what punishment not being important at this moment), presuming she wasn’t justified in some way?
Freewill is a misnomer to me. First of all, I can’t choose anything I wish. I can’t choose to fly, or to turn into a dolphin. I am limited by the physical world in my choices. Second, I am not free to choose within the restrictions of the physical world either. I cannot choose to not live in a world based on globalization or capitalism or oil consumption. That world exists regardless of what I choose to do about it. Even if I decided to forsake that world and go live in the woods where I lived on only what nature provided, that world would still exist and I would still be living in it. Third, I cannot choose things that are within my power but are bound by consequence. I cannot choose to drink and drive whenever I want. Consequences of getting caught, being arrested, losing my license, losing my car, are all limitations that eliminate freewill. I can only choose to drink and drive a limited number of times before consequence removes that choice for me.
What we all call freewill is essentially what freedom is. And freedom is only the freedom to do what you’re allowed to do, which varies based on location, age, race, sex, religious beliefs, etc. There is no true freewill.
That’s a very interesting response. It’s completely different than what I had in mind (which is not your fault, at all, because I left the question vague).
What’s interesting is that your dissection off free will – such dissection leading you to the conclusion that it does not exist – only addresses the fact that external factors keep humans from exerting their wills in whatever way they wish.
I wonder, however, how you feel about the experience of free will itself. Do you think that you would experience free will if you had magic powers and could make any and all externalities bend to your will? In other words, would you have free will if you could make all those limitations that you listed cease to limit you?
Another approach is this: do you think that people deserve things, at least sometimes? I used this example already, but I’ll repeat it: do you think a murderer deserves some form of punishment (don’t worry about the punishment, we’ll assume that it’s the right one or a reasonable one), presuming she didn’t have some justification for the murder which we would recognize as valid?
And thanks for your response, by the way. Oh, and what is your opinion on the existence of God(s)?
I find it difficult to say a certain action deserves a certain reward or punishment. The only thing that would be fair is an eye for an eye, or a voluntarily entered exchange, but I don’t think one who takes an eye deserves to lose an eye, and I don’t really like exchange economies. I’d rather an economy of forgiveness and gifts than an economy of fairness.
Can you further elaborate on why you find it difficult to say a certain action deserves a reward or punishment? Do you have an problem with the very concept of dessert or is it something else?
Do you think we have to punish people for crimes? If so, how should we determine the punishment’s severity? Should it be solely utilitarian: designed for certain ends like deterring the criminal and other citizens from committing the crime in the future? Or is there some kind of inherent sense of justice in the Universe which can only be served by punishing the criminal?
Let’s explore a hypothetical…
There’s a pandemic and all the humans on Earth die except for two of them, a man and a boy who are together in New York surrounded by enough canned food to last their lives. The man is short tempered and he continually regards the boy as a nuisance. He begins to plan the boy’s murder and he carries through with his plan. Now, only the man exists and once he dies humanity will be gone forever.
Do you think the man should be punished? Do you think that it’s a shame that there’s no one there to punish him because he should be punished in some way for murdering the boy?
As am I. I think it would be very difficult to be an atheist and be anything besides a determinist.
What do you think, then, about dessert? Do criminals deserve punishment? Do the virtuous (whatever that means) deserve to be rewarded? What about money earned? What about inherent rights to things such as liberty?
What I have found is that many agnostics still cling strongly to the idea of a transcendent free will or even some kind of soul, and that many atheists still exhibit signs of belief in some kind of free will exhibited in behaviors such as blaming… I don’t know… the obese for overeating and not exercising. Now, an atheist could say, “I choose to act out blame because it will coerce people into better behaviors,” but I doubt many of them have considered it that far.
I don’t really think it’s possible to ‘experience’ free will. It seems to me that in order to be able to execute your own free will there has to be an opposing will in existence that causes you to desire your will. So say I want it to be 78 degrees outside. I can only want that to happen if it isn’t 78 degrees outside. If it were always 78 degrees outside then I would never will for it to be 78. There would be nothing to decide because there was never a consideration. But if it were always 78 then it seems very likely I would want it to be 82, or 74, or whatever.
So say I have magical powers and I can to do whatever I want. For me, the desire to do whatever I want stems from the inability to do that. I would love to be able to fly because it would cut back on travel time and costs, seems like it would be fun, so on. But when I can fly, maybe now I get bugs in my eyes all the time, my eyes water horrible, I’m afraid of heights, the news media follows me where ever I go… so now it’s a horrible experience and my decision goes back. So now I will to travel by car because it’s more comfortable and draws less attention.
But even that isn’t free will. I was free to choose to fly, and I did so, but that decision created a situation that was undesirable and ultimately resulted in my not flying. So should I extend my magical powers to make it impossible for bugs to touch my skin (an awesome power to have by the way)? Do I make myself invisible so people can’t see me? Do I cancel out friction so my eyes don’t water and my ears don’t roar? Do I remove my need to breathe?
In this state, simply to fly as I choose to by free will, why bother existing at all? I’m so quickly removing myself from my own form that flying is only leading to my own dissent into another type of existence entirely. Might as well create a way for myself to just magically teleport to where I want to go, instead of fly.
But now, the initial decision, the core of my desire to being able to fly, simply for the experience of flying, is gone. It’s been destroyed by its own experience. So even with true free will I’m not able to exercise free will. So not only are we not free to do whatever we want to do, even if we could do whatever we wanted, we ultimately wouldn’t want to. I suppose I should be saying ‘I’ instead of ‘we’ but whatever.
I don’t know, there are so many elements to consider that I can’t really answer this question for you. No situation is ever the same, no moral set is the same. I’m not in any position to decide who deserves what.
It is my current position that god(s) do not exist. That does not mean it is impossible for them to exist, nor that they do not exist, but that by my accounts from what I have read and learned, it is highly unlikely that they exist. But if “god” came to my doorstep tomorrow and said “Hey, I exist,” I would believe without argument or regret for previously thoughts and ideas.
My belief system is not based on belief, more so on probability.
I don’t consider myself atheistic/agnostic, but (some) theists may consider so because I don’t positively affirm the existence of Monotheistic God.
Basically, I don’t care about the matter (god). I’m not interested and I don’t think about it, as I’m more interested in other things.
In addition to this, I don’t think it’s a very good idea to cling onto beliefs as it’s like holding on the old evaluations. I tend to think it’s probably better to make fresh evaluation as needed because our preferred perspectives, experiences, surrounding situation, etc. can change and thus the result of evaluation may vary.
So, (some) people may see me as an atheist because I don’t care about god and/or because of the non-believer attitude/preference.
Now, what is “will” to you?
And how free is “free will”, for you?
It seems we have different preferences/desires/motives and we are constant;y evaluating how to act/think.
But all information used for evaluations are from the past, and thus some may argue that we are0 ultimately products of the past and thus “choices” we seem to make are just natural outcome of the distant past.
From the subjective point of view, however, I think most of us are raised to make decisions and thus we tend to think we can choose (at least to certain degree).
And I think you can write about your opinion about the issue, upfront, so that others can understand your views and respond accordingly.
No-body basically hit it on the head. I’ll expand upon that and throw into the ring that the idea of Free Will is a post-Christian hangover. There was this notion of an omnipotent, omniscient being which didn’t jive with the theological fact that this being still judged us. The whole Predestination thing. Various conceptions of free will were introduced to solve this problem. Eventually, philosophy moved away from God but the notion of free will remained as a hangover and other elements were used as a God-substitute (like nature, causality, and so on).
If we look at pre-Christian or non-Christian notions of fate we see a slightly different picture. It is a force that compels and drives us but at the same time its actions can only be seen in retrospect. So, fate is basically the present interacting with previous events that gave rise to the now. You’ll note that it only becomes immobile when we fight against it. Achilles was given a choice regarding his fate. In trying to avoid his own death, Laius sealed his fate. The Chinese concept of fate is similar. We should study our fate not because it is inevitable but because that is where our success lies. You can marry someone with whom you are astrologically incompatible, but such a union will be unhappy and unsuccessful. For example, you’ve got numerous cases in the Epics where the gods are bound by fate. There are other instances where the gods control fate. Likewise, you’ve got numerous instances where humans are bound by fate and others where humans control fate. It isn’t a clear-cut matter of freedom vs. determinism. They bleed into each other.
Unless one is Christian, to bind one’s self to the notion of free will conceived in a Christian environment can’t help but lead to confusion and contradiction. So, as a non-Christian, why engage in the discussion of free will, being as it is so hopelessly mired in Christian thought? Libertarian free will only makes sense if we are free from something. If there is nothing to be free from, the question is nonsensical.
But I see where you are going with it. I’ll attribute your position to outdated mathematics. In arithmetic, 1+1 cannot help but be answered as “2”. Since mathematics models the world so effectively, it makes sense to think of the world in terms of mathematics. But what about the square root of 4? With equal correctness, that can be answered with either “2” or “-2”. So already within this determinate system, inklings of indeterminacy make their presence felt. Options! The quadratic root of 16 has three solutions! We can keep going.
But why not step into algebra? y=x has an infinite number of answers. For every x possible, there is a y-value, and vice-versa. Constrained, yes. But even ardent defenders of free-will don’t argue for a system without constrain (unless they are solipsists and therefore crazy).
Still too limited? What about differential equations? Any given differential equation can be solved in a variety of ways, and each solution results in an algebraic equation with an infinite number of solutions.
And what are the mathematical models which best model our world? You guessed it, differential equations. Naturally, we normally deal with them having already been solved for a particular reference so we think of them as being straight-up algebra.
But even that oversimplification allows for an infinite number of solutions.
Determinism is as meaningless as free will. Don’t put too much stock in either.
At first thought I would say it is impossible to calculate desserts. For example, who can say what the appropriate reward/punishment is for raping a woman? Is it getting raped in return? Is it ten years in prison? A slap on the wrist? There really isn’t any fair treatment here, but even if there was, at second thought I don’t even think desserts should play a role in our decision-making. A murderer surely deserves a number of terrible responses for what they’ve done, but wouldn’t the sign of an advanced character be rising above the level of tit-for-tat, and treating the murderer in a way that they don’t deserve, namely with love and kindness?
The answer to this should be clear from my prior comment. Or as I said in my previous post, the only fair response would be an eye for an eye (ut I doubt whether even this is possible, since no eye is equal to another), or a voluntarily entered into exchange (but good luck getting someone to voluntarily enter into punishment!).
Meh. I’m sure he’ll be punished simply for being the last human being on earth. At some point in his future, he will need someone, and there will be nobody there. What more punishment does he need?
Ah. See, the problem is language. You said quadratic roots, which means we’re dealing with a power of 2, versus quartic roots, which is what you’re giving me here, dealing with a power of 4.
Then let’s face it, finding another system flawed is being judgmental. Nothing wrong with that, it’s necessary. But you dismissed it. We’re way to worried about being judgmental. The only problem is if we’re wrong when we do it.
I am an explicit negative atheist; I think there is most probably no God (in the most prevalent senses of the word “God”). And I do not believe in free will.
I have two pairs of shoes. For simplicity’s sake, let’s suppose I can’t wear one shoe of the first pair and another of the second to work at the same time, and have to wear shoes to work. There are then just two choices: wear the first pair, or wear the second pair. Shall I choose the brown pair, or the black pair? I think my choice is entirely dependent on factors determining it. What I call “my will” is just the resultant of those factors. And the idea of ‘free will’ can itself be such a factor. If I decide to wear the other pair ‘anyway’, so as to assert my free will, that too is entirely deterministic. The unfreedom of the will is evident from the fact that there can only be one outcome: I can only wear one pair at any one time.
