My Basic Thought On Free Will

[Piers]

Conway's Free Will Theorem

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"If there exist experimenters with (some) free will, then elementary particles also have (some) free will."

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Very amusing.

[DonkBluffer]

Read only like 2/3 of this thread, but I have a question.

Many asian philosophies and such say that there is no such thing as a seperate self. That this self that we believe we are is an illusion. Now, assuming they were right, can free will exist then? If the answer is no, maybe investigating the existence of seperate selves is easier. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[spyderracing]

Just came across this thread and found it interesting. I consider myself a proponant of Holbach's idea of hard determinism. I think the causality of all events makes it pretty much impossible for someone to have free will (don't get this confused with fatalism). Sure it seems we have freewill and can deliberate prior to making a decision but those are all events that are part of a causal chain immediately leading up to the decision. As far as basing a proof of free will based on discussion of free will goes; I don't think it would hold much water. Sure someone originally posed the question but I'm sure it was based on some event in their life that led to them pondering the question initially. This may still happen to individuals today but I think more often than not someone pondering their own freewill is doing so because they happend to stumble upon the argument with no prior interest in the subject. Does this mean I don't believe in punishing or rewarding people for their respective "rights" and "wrongs"? No, I believe this is done primarily to promote others to take heed to the outcomes of certain actions as part of a causal chain (probably present in the deliberation part) in their own lives. Why is it hard for a lot of people who are reared in poor living conditions to make it out of those conditions? I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in the ghetto most of my life and I'm not sure anyone would, but there is that idea of causality that I feel is leading most to stay there.

Sorry if I rambled a little and got off track, but I felt some examples would help.

[sandman-54]

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I consider myself a proponant of Holbach's idea of hard determinism.

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Although it was as hard to wrap my head around the philosophy in high school as it is now, Determinism makes much more sense to me than any argument I've been presented proposing free will.

A determinist believes that there are two elements to a personality: one's unique genetic make-up and one's environment up to the current point in time. If this is the case, then every decision a person makes is based only on these parameters, despite people's capacity to "make" decisions.

Creating a proof that free will exists would simply translate into proving a third element in a personality. One would find it hard to prove this third seemingly intangible boundary that may be called a "will."

[Poker monkey]

If humans have free will, I think you'd have to agree that chimpanzees have it as well. Humans behave in pretty much the same way as chimps albeit with bigger brains, but there presumably wasn't a defining moment in our evolution when we stopped being "autonomous robots" and gained free will.

And if chimps have it, so must monkeys ... extend argument to mice, fish, amoeba, viruses, and any self-duplicating arrangement of matter.

Although it's counter-intuitive, I'm pretty sure free will is an illusion. It doesn't even stand up well to definition, let alone scrutiny of its existence.

Observably, people (including myself) make different decisions based on the chemicals in their brain at the time, e.g. try playing poker when you're drunk, and you'll probably find yourself pushing and losing more often than you normally would. There are always different chemicals in your brain influencing your behaviour, so behaviour could never be said to be truly free. Same argument for experience, although it's not as easy to prove since you can't test people without / with / then without again.

If we're looking for a % of behaviour that is not influenced by past experience / memories, genetic tendencies, or ingested chemicals, then you're talking about the "free" part of free will. But if it's "free", that suggests the decision could go either way, and seems very close to the definition of "random".

So I suppose I'm a determinist. The problem with this is that it provides no incentive to get out of bed in the morning. "I don't have any free will. It was pre-determined that I should stay in bed all day." And that's the real paradox - that people think they do have free will and take responsibility for their actions.

[selfreferential]

I struggled with free will for some time long ago until I realized that it is a dead end.
FIrst off, you have the more technical problems rasied in the beginning of this post.
More colloquially, free will doesn't exist based on some simple psychological ruminations. In general, our actions obey our will (if they don't, you'd better get to the doctor). In other words, we do what we want/will to do.
Now, who decides what we want/will? Philosophical connundrums aside (there is a dangerous possibility of infinite regress here) I think most people will agree that the solid intuitions we have about free will break down immediately at this point. Do we actually 'choose' what to want or will? Not at all. Our 'will' seems to emerge whole cloth from our psychological machinery.

In other words, it doesn't even seem like we have free will, once you think about it.

[dogreplacer]

Welcome to Retardville. Population: you

[drunkencowboy]

Do people in prison have free will?

So whats the difference between the bars of the prison cell and the bounds of our planet? How can we have free will?

Im going to kill myself. (bang)

[gedanken]

I think of free will in terms of responsibility. What are we responsible for? That's free will.

Surely we think people should be responsible for their actions. Treat it as a purely functional question. What is the optimal societal reaction to people who exhibit behaviour X? Do we execute, lock up, or treat sociopaths? What are the criteria to choose one solution or the other? You can't just treat all behaviour equally because it is [random|predetermined], that is absurd public policy.

Treat the mind as a black box, and act acording to the output. Don't try to take apart the clockwork and judge the parts, because each part of the clock is no longer a clock, it's just a gear or spring.

Dawkins writes about this in The Selfish Gene. He's a better writer than I am, but I can't find my copy right now. IIRC, he's suggesting that we are finally having to confront the idea of free will, because we're learning enough about the mind to be able to identify causes of behaviour in some cases. The whole notion of a cause that "made" someone do something clashes with our notion of free will, but it needn't. That cause is still part of the person, not a separate entity.



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Ain't no sense worrying about things you got no control over, 'cause if you got no control over them ain't no sense in worrying. And ain't no sense worrying about things you got control over, 'cause if you got control over them, ain't no sense worrying.

--Mickey Rivers

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[PokerAmateur4]

Piers,
I don't follow. You seem to say "Free will exists, because the illusion of free will should come from evolution." Maybe you can evolve the illusion of free will, but I don't see how what you said proves anything about actually having free will.

Valenzuela,
"Free will implies that having made a choice, it is always possible that one might have chosen otherwise.
If its not possible that one could have chosen otherwise then there is no freewill.
My question to those who believe on free will, how could I have chosen differently?"
That's how I feel. Defining free will in a meaningful way seems to be difficult. I think defining determinism is helpful to do first. I like the definition that:
"there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future"

So all your choices and thoughts are to be, even before you are born.

I agree with the above, as I don't see how anyone can explain to me how a given scenario had the ability to come out differently. Also, if there are probabilities assigned to each outcome, I still don't see that as meaningful, or what I personally would consdier "free" will, as it's just random probabilities and prior circumstances.