Many of us around here agree that everything that occurs is based on cause and effect.
If we were to know the cause or contributary causes we would be able to predict the effect(s).
This general idea leads most people to say they are a determinist or believe in determinism.
I think this might be an incorrect position to take, or rather the wrong term to use.
Even though causes exist behind every effect, we are nothing more than filtering systems for perception, unaware of the exact nature of those causes. Going without this knowledge, we then delight in our choices and our opinions and take pride in what we prefer. As a filter, we are like a train station where the “locomotive of choice” stops only long enough to pass through, on course to an unknown destination that it may never arrive at . . . sorry for the extended metaphor, but its the one that rings true for me.
The point i’m trying to make is that, no, we dont have free will. Things are determined, but we as determiners are unable to make any determination. Therefore, we do have choice, the illusion of choice. We have the choice over . . . nothing real.
So while it may just be words in a debate, a defintion to use, might we dump the term determinst, and start calling ourselves, oh I dont know, “Choice fakers.”
it kind of sounds like a hopeful spin on determinism… i agree that if determinism be true then we are just illusory fungi.
my analogy is that we are the are like gamblers throwing dice… the thing is determinism would apply to the dice
the idea first came to me with the thought of destiny… regardless of what we are, why we are, or why we do what we do, we make choices.
we make choices. this is a sure thing.
think of plinko on the price is right… we are the little disc bobbing down, bouncing on the rods of choice towards a destiny slot.
there are 2 ways to view the journey. if it is all determined, then i say “at least it’s a hell of a ride”. and if there is even some measure of unknown or greater reality of which we are currently unaware, then i say “stay back!”
Here’s one Buddhist view of this issue - I think it’s similar but different to what you’re saying. In some ways our freedom is illusory, yet so is our bondage. As long as our imaginations continue to add more to reality than what is really there, we will be subject to the concepts of bondage and freedom. I think what this writer calls “true freedom” refers to the renunciation of delusion, including delusion concerning the supposedly real conflict between bondage and freedom.
“Thus, freedom and determinism are not incompatible in the Buddhist philosophical tradition. In fact, according to the Buddhist teachings, freedom is contingent on understanding the prevailing and predetermined karmic causes and conditions in our lives. An act of freedom is not regarded as something that occurs in a miraculous fashion, as if our actions had no antecedent causal conditions. Only by understanding the governing causes and conditions—which have led to our present state of bondage in samsara—can we entertain the possibility of achieving true freedom. If we are to have any real chance of realizing ultimate freedom, we need to understand how such and such causes and conditions have contributed to our state of bondage, and we need to understand the factors that sustain the underlying mechanisms of samsaric imprisonment. According to the teachings on buddhanature, our state of ignorance and the obscurations that govern our current state of being are caused by distorted thoughts, conflicting emotions and unbridled instinctual feelings. However, because these things are a product of causes and conditions, they can be illuminated and renounced. Their potential removability, combined with the primordial presence of buddhanature, is what makes liberation possible.” - Traleg Kyabgon
I actually had a short debate with my roommate about this last night. Is there any choice when every outcome is an effect of a cause? Every decision you make is a result of the culmination of your life up to that point. There’s no reason to assume any decision you made could have been made the other way. It seems like our best ‘choice’ is to become more informed or educated in a subject before making further inevitible decisions. This at least allows us to make the best possible decision that we have no choice in making.
It depends on your definition of free will. If by free will you mean unpredictable or random, then no, in the sense that everything is caused, we don’t. However I don’t think this is a suitable definition of free will. Free will is our ability to make choices unimpeded. There may come a time in psychology where a persons actions can be predicted to 100% accuracy, because of knowledge of how they will act under certain circumstances, how their brain processes information, what critical thinking they put into their choices etc. etc. However to say that causes force us to do things, if a leap too far. There is never just one cause acting upon me, there are several if not hundreds, known and unknown. All I do, is decided from the causes which course of action is best. I have the choice of what the effect will be.
Let’s suppose I’m on my death-bed, never having gone to Greece. Someone says a-ha! It was impossible for you to ever go to Greece! This is true, and then again its not. If I would have truly wanted to go to Greece, I probably would have. But since I didn’t want to, does it matter? If someone would have travelled from the future to my youth and told me that its impossible for me to go to Greece, I could have proved him wrong if I wanted to.
When one views his life in retrospect, he might notice that there was only one way it could have gone. He curses and says “I never had a choice!”. But of course he had a choice. He always picked the choice he wanted to pick the most. If that isn’t free will I don’t know what is. Who cares if a supercomputer could, in theory, predict our decisions? They are still ours to make.
Yuck, there are that many determinists on this board?! Well, no use arguing with you, your responses are canned anyway. Is this what science has done to us? Turned us into automatons unable to take responsibility for our own choices?
BTW, lack of coercion is not free will. A robot is not coerced to weld together car bodies, but I wouldn’t say it had free will. Anyway, there’s my input into your system, so I eagerly anticipate your factory-made responses.
We are very much responsible for our choices, even in determinism. After all, we make choices based on what we want to do. I don’t think freedom of choice and determinism are contradictory at all.
Yep, coercion has nothing to do with it.
Free will as most people use the word is a concept that I have rejected because it requires some sort of mystical magical supernatural entity (like a soul) to make it work and even then I don’t really see why it makes such a big difference except in a Christian theology.
Cause and effect. What is it that makes humans an exception?
That’s what I was trying to say! Prediction of actions, doesn’t make them unfree. They would only be unfree had I no choice in the matter.
No it’s not. The ability to choose unimpeded is though. In the case of the robot, yes it is not coerced but it doesn’t have a choice anyway, its in his programming.
Please elaborate on this. If I read determinism correctly, whether or not I type on this message board is already determined. I think I have the choice, but in reality there is no other action that I could take. It’s like having our robot friend, but programming him to say whenever asked that he is welding out of his own free will. There is no choice. All of our choices are in our ‘programming’ so to speak. All of the billions of little causes that go into a particular moment and the outcome of that moment are what produce the ‘choice’ and not ‘me’ in a meaningful sense.
Ok, say you are presented a choice, with only two options, type or don’t type. (Whatever other possibility doesn’t exist in this example) Now you might want to type, because you want to respond to my post, that is the cause. And similarly you might want to not type, because while you want to reply, you also have sore fingers, that again is the cause. Both choices have a cause. Similarly both will have an effect. The choice is completely yours. One cause may be stronger than the other, but it doesn’t imply it will be the one that you act on. The free will is choosing which cause to act on.
Now imagine a world without cause and effect, if such a thing is possible. Again, same situation, two choices, type or don’t type. No causes, no effects. You have to choose one. The free will is choosing which one.
Why is the second scenario any different to the first? Causes don’t force my hand, they give me reason to prefer one choice over the other.
A person could be faced with the exact same scenario twice and act differently on both occasions.
Free will is compatible with casual determinism. We make choices all the time. But that does not mean that we are omnipotent and have control over everything or can break the laws of physics.
I’m running into some problems with this, namely isn’t my wanting to type simply the effect of some earlier cause? If you’re making the claim that my wants are a causeless effect, then I’m right there with you, but if I read causal determinism correctly, my wants are not my choices to make. They have been predetermined. It’s just computer programming then.
Yeah, you are right. Both causes are the effects of whatever preceeded them. However the point is not that there is causeless effects, it is that given the two causes, YOU and ONLY YOU can choose what the next effect will be. It wouldn’t be physically possible for us to do something that is not caused by something. What free will is though is the ability to choose the effect.
it kind of sounds like a hopeful spin on determinism… i agree that if determinism be true then we are just illusory fungi.
Is this what science has done to us? Turned us into automatons unable to take responsibility for our own choices?