musing on freewill

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

Pinacle,

"‘Man recieves phone call to come pick up 1 million dollars. Man decides to go pick up money.’

The phone call will actully be a cause, IF the man did pick up the money. But at the time of the phone call, the man can decide to or not to pick up the money."

If the man chooses not to pick up the money, what reason did he have for making this decision? If he had a reason, than youve got determinism, if he did it completely randomly (which I would contend is impossible, but even if he did) than the free will is nothing but a randomness generator, and I dont think you are willing to accept this, nor is this supported by behavioral sciences.

22

Russiantank

things are not as simple as that, there are many reasons as to why a man won’t go and pick up the money. to make understanding simpler, imagin you standing beside a swimming pool weighing up the pros and cons of diving into the water. at that moment, you are exercising what I call “free will”.

Dr.Satanical

it would help if you actually replied to my response in a paragraph and not dissect my writting line by line for you can easily and have taken me out of context.

The word determinism and free will both have means, I asked you to define and distinguish their respective linguistic meanings. But let me take the initiative to define them.

Determinism = our decisions are subject entirely to cause and effect
Free will = our decisions are beyond cause and effect

Determinism is a view that the world including us are governed inherently by some order. our past, present, future have all been determined in advance. we are doing, thinking what we have already been determined to do, to think. Determinism implies the possibility to look into the future, for the future as an equation is set. But I propose a hypothetical scenario.

Assumptions

  1. the future is set
  2. you know the future

case

You have seen the future, that you will eat an apple. Once you have know the future, is it possible to change the future? I say, by all account you can choose not to eat the apple. Therefore one of the assumptions above is wrong.

Also, if I relive my life again. I do not know if I will make the same choices because at the center of this debate is what is the mind.

Determinism is irrational because it claims all things are set because somethings are set. They claim mind is deterministic when they have no idea what is the mind. On the other hand, free will claims we make random choices, some of our choices are arational.

23

The very act of prediction is itself part of causality. If the prediction alters reality we have an infinite loop, because we have to predict each change the prediction cause and each change the prediction of the prediction cause, and so on (the prediction of you eating the apple cause you not to eat it, and if you know it will cause you not to eat, that again would cause you to eat it etc.). Determinism only implies the “possibility” to look into the future if the observer is an external one. So in this case nr. 2 must be false, and determinism still stands.

And if your case were valid, a computer could be programmed to have “free will”, simply by taking the predictions of the future and acting upon them, thereby “defeating” causality with causal logic – hm…

Determinism is a rational and probable theory because everywhere we look we observe that things are caused, and because I see no indications that human action can not be explained in a causal way. If you define “Free Will” as random choices, then that is also a logical possibility (although much less probable, and not as logical, if you ask me). I believe the common definition of “free will” is different, and makes no logical sense.

If your last sentence was an indirect claim that a determined action is always a rational one, then you don’t seem to understand that “rational” is a subjective human term that has nothing to do with determinism.

24

How do you not believe in a free will? Free will is a desire followed by choice. I have both a desire and I choose, therefore I have a free will.

Will is not based on biological need. My body tells me I need food, I can still starve it. Chemicals may affect your mood, but moods do not effect actions.

25

here’s an explenation of why i don’t believe in free will.

Since all thought processes are a series of chemical reactions in response to external and internal sensory input, all thought processes are therefore a chain of events.

if you make a free will decision you are making it free of any influence (any sensory input is an influence since there is an AUTOMATIC response to it by your brain) Since this is not possible because all decisions are arrived at by a chain of events, outwith your controll because they are started by sensory input, it is impossible to make a free choice.

If it is impossible to have a free choice it is impossible to have free will.

A little logic goes a long way.

I do not wish to believe in free will for the following reasons.

since a person cannot be responsible for the outcome of their actions (sensory input leads to decision leads to action which leads to outcome e.g. a long chain of events starting with the original sensory input.) You cannot punish them. To do so would be to cause the perverted suffering of another based on your own wish to cause suffering.
Since any such perverted wish would be evil, i do not wish to believe in free will, because if i did, i would be evil.

26

PoR,

On the contrary, I find adressing each point to be a far superior way of getting to the point. I am quite sure I have not taken you out of context anywhere, and if I have you should take it as a hint to articulate your thoughts better.

Well, sort of. Determinism holds that EVERYTHING is subject entirely to cause and effect. Freewill holds that our descisions are somehow exempt from this seemingly universal rule, without offering up an explaination as to why this might be.

What you fail to include in this quite flawed scenario, is that the prediction itself would be a factor, that would influence the outcome.

No, determinism claims all things are causal and that results in a fixed path for EVERYTHING.
As for what is rational; that is for us to decide…it is subjective to a situation, and plays no part in cause/effect, which doesn’t care about such things.

27

oh
another thing

desire and choice

what is desire, is it something you chose or is it something you have?

28

to all determinists

The question I have put forward is “is it possible to know the future for the future has already been determined?” someone said you get into an infinite loop for seeing the future would in itself be a factor, well that’s exactly my point.

your future has become your present, but your future must be inclusive of your present.

I have articulated my thoughts in a paragraph, and you should reply to the paragraph in its entirety.

then how can there be an original cause?

29

It is impossible to know the future, simply because we cannot have total awareness of everything, we can never be all knowing. Even theoreticly, knowing the future is impossible. Because: If I were to figure out the future, which I would be determined to do, the new information gained by my brain would also be part of the universe, and it would be something I could not have known about until it already happend (quibles, if your reading this, Ide bet youre smiling now) This just shows that knowing the whole future is impossible. Heres a better way of putting it: So knowing the position of particles and all that, I figure out that the future is X. But me figuring out X is a new event in the universe, lets call it Y. So to actually see the future, I have to have knowledge of X + Y beforehand. But I cannot know the effects of Y untill I know X. Y can only be determined once I have figured out X, so I can never know the future. Get it? It has something to do with the observer effecting the observed. (I bet quibles is having an orgasm right now…)

Determining the whole future is thus impossible, and yet we predict it and infact change the predicted future all the time. For example, a man is crossing a street, and a car is coming at him, but hes looking the other way. If you see this, you determine their trajectories and obtain knowledge of a possible future. This knowledge causes you to act in a manner that changes the predicted future: you yell out, and get the guys attention, he stops, and the car passes by an inch from hitting him. If you had not been looking, there would have been nothing to cause you to yell out to him, and he would have been hit by the car.

“then how can there be an original cause?”

There doesn’t have to be one, it could be infinite causality…

30

You are thinking small.
Do you honestly think we have the means, within our technology now, to determine the ‘origin of the universe’?
Do you think any guesse we can postulate now would be likely to be true, given our almost complete absense of data?
The idea that an original cause spurred off the universe in some sort of metaphorical cause tree is simply not supported by any data, and is at best a highly unlikely shot in the dark.

31

The way I see it is we, as humans, have been placed in a box by the universe. The box has six solid sides that are impenatrable.

We humans have “free reign” over every inch of that box. We swim through that box with smiles from ear to ear. The medium we swim is composed of things liked Happines, love, fear etc.

There may be something outside of that box, but we humans dont know and we may never know. Maybe as the centuries pass that box we are in will get ever so slightly bigger and bigger, but we will forever be “imprisoned” in that box.

In that box we control our destiny. With these set of rules we are able explore every and any possibility under the sun…but only within those rules.

100 light years away there may be an alien race with 20 more emotions than humans have AND they can fly and are telepathic (so cool). Their Box is three times as large as a humans, therefore they have a larger and perhaps more “real” sense of free will.

I dont think our boxes lead us to our future. I think they just show us what we can work with and influence us in our lives.

But then you can say, “that box is can be simply defined as a one way road. One that can never be changed, therefore we dont even have slight free will.” I guess it falls on perception.

As far as humans are concerned, we do have free will within our box. But beings like god know we don’t…maybe. -BRIO

32

The future being determined does not require us to know the future. What it means is that, theoretically, an outside observer could determine the future if it knew the properties of all particles in our universe, that’s determinism.

And why is there something rather than nothing? I’m not going to claim to know the answers to these questions. Scientifically, the best we can do is look at the state of the universe and try to trace it backwards – currently we seem to arrive at a big bang by doing this. Perhaps it is meaningless to define a start, because the past is just like the future, simply a potentially infinite trace of the now. Well, it gets weird no matter how you think about it really…

Possibly. My problem with this is: How did we ever arrive at the now if we had to travel for infinity to get here?

33

“My problem with this is: How did we ever arrive at the now if we had to travel for infinity to get here?”

Im not really sure what you mean… But surely this is just a critique of infinity. If this is the case, this same critique applies to the alternative of infinite causality, the original cause. That original event must have been infinite. So I think this same question would apply to the alternative…

34

Yes, my problem is with infinity itself when defined as anything but a potential. Perhaps the original event was zero rather than infinite?

35

I fail to see how that would work…

36

Time is a measurement of events, and before events time would not exist. Therefore the very first event would start the “timer”. This event would begin at zero, and would not be infinite (because then it would never come about). Also, I don’t see this as necessarily incompatible with determinism, as knowledge of the initial state would enable one to predict the future (even if the first event has no cause save for itself). I’m not entirely happy with this idea, but I think it is more logical than anything involving infinities.

Another idea that avoids infinity (as anything but a potential), is to look at the past as we look at the future – as a “continuation” of the now, only in the opposite direction. This sounds very strange to us because of the way we percieve time, and I’m not entirely happy with this idea either.

37

Russiantank got the point.

Dr.Satanical

proof for determinism lies in our ability to see into the future. since that is impossible, so is the proof for determinism.

celox

no that’s partial determinism. therefore no determinism at all. how can you make a hole that’s half empty?

sometimes the best you can do is not good enough for proof.

Belief in determinism requires proof, but as many have shown is impossible. Freewill makes more sense because even though our past has been determined by our will our future as far as we are concerned, we do not know. we feel we have choices, and that is not an illusion, because we do have free choices governed by our will.

38

Dont misunderstand me Pinnacle, I am a determinist.

Celox: “The future being determined does not require us to know the future. What it means is that, theoretically, an outside observer could determine the future if it knew the properties of all particles in our universe, that’s determinism.”

Yes, this is the point Pinnacle, though the outside observer has to be comlpetely seperate from the universe. The observer’s chain of causality if it even has one must in no way coincide with the universe’s causal chain. Only then, would it be theoreticly possible to predict the future. This is not as you say “Partial determinism.” Determinism only says that every event has a cause. Simply causality. Nothing more. A result of causality is that the future is set, everything has happend, is happening, and will happen because of reasons that trace back for as far as we can imagine, and we dont know how far it can be traced back, if theres an original cause, or whatever. We dont know this, and as a result of us being part of the universe and our very limited intellect, we are unable to actually determine the future. All we can do is predict it, come up with possibilities and probabilities. We do this all the time, and I think the extent to which we do predict the future lends credence to the idea behind determinism. The more causes of events we understand, the better our predictions will get, this complies with determinism and is exactly what we notice in reality.

“proof for determinism lies in our ability to see into the future. since that is impossible, so is the proof for determinism.”

Again, you misunderstand determinism. The evidence for determinism lies in our awareness of cause and effect relationships. So much evidence I would say that it might as well be proven.

“Freewill makes more sense because even though our past has been determined by our will our future as far as we are concerned, we do not know. we feel we have choices, and that is not an illusion, because we do have free choices governed by our will.”

Freewill requires proof as well, or lets call it evidence. Freewill has much less evidence than determinism, actually ide say none at all. You saying that we feel choice and this is not an illusion is not evidence. As a matter of fact, free will is illogical by definition. It is something that has no reason, which is illogical. I cannot see how one can adhere to logic and yet accept a free will.

39

I think you are confused. Determinism (as commonly defined) does not require us to be able to look into the future. The perfect prediction of the future, as often used as an example, is purely theoretical. Perhaps you should read up on the subject…

What do you mean by “proof”? Absolute proof? In order to believe in determinism all I need is reason to find it more probable than the alternatives.

So the definition of freewill is a lack of knowledge concerning the future? Then a computer has free will as well. If you are going to make up your own definitions for freewill and determinism it will only lead to confusion, unless you clearly define what you mean by the terms.

“I believe that God does not exist, and that is not a lie, because God does not exist.”

40

I have said before, determinism means everything in the universe is set. Did or did it not make that claim? If it did, then we must know that everything in the universe is set. but we don’t because we can’t see into the future. therefore we can not claim to know everything is set and so we can’t say determinism is true.

also probability does not exist under a deterministic system since everything has already been determined.

things in the universe do have causes as RT has pointed out, but does that theory apply to our mind? I believe we are influenced by outside factors, but ultimately, it is our will that is making the choices, the choices haven’t been mapped.

Our future hasn’t happened yet, so we have the will to change the future. I really don’t know what this debate is all about since we all agree that we can not see into the future. just because things have causes does not mean thoses causes have been SET. How can things be set when they haven’t occured yet?