My Basic Thought On Free Will

[Piers]

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Well if you are going to discuss this question rigorously, it is imperative that you define what you mean by "free will" in very precise technical terms.

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No $hit.

In my opinion free will exists.

The most natural way to consider it is as a sensation that humans, and presumably other primates at least, feel when they make decisions.

The advantage it gives the life form is I think clear, especially if you consider a human that does not have the sensation of free will when making decisions can reasonably be considered insane.

Inability to generate the sensation of free will typically leads to a feeling that life is meaningless and a much-increased chance of suicide. It would appear easy to see how life forms evolved to have this particular trait.

Another way to view free will, is as a view we have on the world, analogues to say tinted glasses. Viewing all social reactions between humans with the presumption of free will makes the interpretation of these actions much easier and hence much simplifies decision-making.

While the sensation of free will is a very useful process, it is nevertheless a form of self-delusion and there I think times where it is useful to deactivate it.

For instance say you make a tight pre flop fold, and would have floped the nuts and miss out on a huge flop. This can be quite distressing if you actually believe you had a free choice when you folded.

I find myself generally unaffected by this sort of thing, because I can get myself to really believe I did not have a choice. That the way the universe was constructed I had no option but to make the decision I made. This prevents me getting upset and allows me to more easily maintain my focus. In almost all other situations I manage to maintain the illusion of free will. Fortunately I believe I have a particularly stable personality, so I feel I can get away with such dangerous tampering with my psychological balance. I would not necessarily recommend it to everyone.

[George Rice]

Free will?

When I hear this term used in religious circles it has to do with a decision, usually about an action.

Is the meaning here to mean free will to think anything? If so, the answer for most people is no, imo. Too many barriers were placed in one's development process by parents, teachers, etc to have no restrictions on thinking. Even if you don't see any doesn't mean they aren't there. It would be easier for someone else to see (who has different barriers).

If free will is about choices then the answer would also be no, imo. Can you murder your children just to see if they'll scream? Only an insane person can answer that question yes. Instinct will get in the way of that decision.

Can David take all of his clothes off right now, walk out his door and start walking over to the Bellagio? Not unless he went insane (although I've been told there is a thin line between insane and genius [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ).

So, perhaps only a truly insane person has free will.

[Gabe]

if there is something other than our genes and our experience that determines what we do, what is it?

if there is nothing else, then it is merely our extensive use of symbols for metaphors of reality, that gives us the illusion of free will.

[goofball]

David,

How do you know god isn't forcing us to consider the free will problem?

[pete fabrizio]

not to be a philosophy snob, but i don't think there's anything in this thread that isn't covered a hundred times in an undergraduate survey course on free will. people are making a lot of statements or conclusions that they think are dispositive, as if philosophers haven't considered every one of these arguments since aristotle -- and a million articles have been written on the implications that genetics and quantum mechanics have for the debate.

If someone has made a dispositive statement about free will, it would probably be the aforementioned Bertrand Russell, from Why I am Not a Christian:

"If when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other."

This doesn't really say much on the question of whether we have free will or not, but it illustrates the necessity of acting as if.

[EnderIII]

The idea of a proof of free will resulting from the premise of deliberating about free will is interesting. As far as I know, the opposite approach is normatlly taken (without free will we could not deliberate, or at least without the future seeming open we could not deliberate)

I would probably challenge the premise that we actually deliberate (or that this word is as murky as the other terms in the debate) as my earlier post suggested. But I think most people will accept that we deliberate (it seems even more basic than free will in a way and while free will may be necessary for deliberation, deliberation may be sufficient for free will) so it is an argument that would have wide appeal.

There is a potential problem since all that may be required for deliberation is the illusion of free will. But the OP may well have been intending to go a different direction with this. Also while almost certainly a minority position, it seems to me that the link between moral responsibility and free will is exagerated. From a utilitarian perspective, learning that we have no free will does not present good grounds to give up the current moral structure we have in place unless we can replace it with a better (in terms of utility) structure. No structure at all is almost certainly negative utility for society.

A similar error is often made in terms of skepticism:

We don't know that we aren't brains in vat.
If we don't know we aren't brains in a vat, we don't know we have hands.
We don't know we have hands.

But then an additional step is usually taken,

Since we don't know we have hands, we should stop believing that we have hands. Then iterate this for all other beliefs and you arrive at the principle that you should stop believing everything. But this principle of belief revision does not follow from skepticism and is an independent assertion.

[Magellan]

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If free will is about choices then the answer would also be no, imo. Can you murder your children just to see if they'll scream? Only an insane person can answer that question yes. Instinct will get in the way of that decision.

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You can't discriminate like that; either we all have free will or we all don't have free will. If one "insane" person can exhibit this behaviour then we all potentially can, it's just that the overwhelming majority of people "choose" not to. So if you want to conclude that a person murdering their child just to see if they'll scream is a demonstration of free will, it only takes one person to actually do it to prove that we all have free will*.

For the record, a person behaving that way does not prove nor disprove that we have free will IMO.


*Unless you want to argue that not all human beings are born equal, to the effect that some can truly exercise free will while others can't, but hey, I'm not going there. Also, if you want to argue that point then there needs to be way, at least theoretically, that we can distinguish between those with free will and those without free will that doesn't rely purely on retrospective consideration of someone's actions.

[NT!]

David,

Do you think this is a problem that will be solved by logical proof, or one that scientists will eventually address when we start to better understand the brain? It seems to me it's just a level of complexity that neuroscience hasn't yet reached... and one I'm not all that anxious for them to reach, either.

[pete fabrizio]

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David,

Do you think this is a problem that will be solved by logical proof, or one that scientists will eventually address when we start to better understand the brain? It seems to me it's just a level of complexity that neuroscience hasn't yet reached... and one I'm not all that anxious for them to reach, either.

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Science can help moderately with the determinism question, but not with the compatibalism question. Most people in the debate are determinists these days, but moreover, most people who argue that we do have free will argue that determinism is irrelevant whether they believe in it or not.

[fatheaddy]

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If there is no free will, does it mean that there is an algorithm that will predict all future actions?



No.



I don't understand. Is the answer no because there is true randomness in the states the human encounters? If so, does this mean there is an algorithm which takes as input the state of the universe and outputs the human's decision?



In theory it is possible, you just create an exact model of the universe and just watch it to see what is going to happen.

In practices I believe it is logically beyond humans to completely predict the future in this way, as the universe satisfies the conditions of Gödel’s theorem.


It sounds very deterministic to me... how would you build an exact theoretical model without an Super-algorithm you could only define (or prove) with an existing Model? Even then you would have collision with the uncertainity relation, wich would exist in the theoretical model too, and never would be able to prove it at least. A model that lasts as long there is no bether one, like all models.
Chaos... The underestimate factor, call it hazard if you like. Our organism, and obviously every living organism, is a structured organisation that fight against chaos permanently, because we're walkin against the natural entropy, wich surrounds us! Think about, all our deeds are basically work against desorganisation in order to keep or create structure . Our thoughts tend to build structured models and perceptions(more or less) from the endless chaotic input. How could we survive this flow without an free will?javascript:void(0)
On the other side you could argue exactly this could be a reason for a kind of bio-robotic background of all living organism, this might correspond to ants or bees, but primates tend to do useless and absurd things like painting pictures, making music, create gods and reproduce themselves without intended descendants, there must be something like a free will in us! Everything else is an obnoxious thought.
Another simple way to think about it: Is the fact, that we are thinking and debating about it not the prove of our free will? Shouldn't all genius of the earth allways found the same results to any given problem, if their will are determined by a kind of robotic logic or mental software? Obviously they dont't...javascript:void(0)
Oh... you could argue that there is a kind of great plan determining the whole, each individual subject only part of it, so you could determine the future action of the collective but not of the singular subject( see 'Foundation cycle' from Isaac Asimov, an entertaining sight of this point of view).
I come back to the topic. How could you determine the whole future of an individual or a collective without determining all other exterior aspects first, because they obviously influence most of our actions? I believe you can't either... the fact that I mistrust any determination is prove enough... for me personaly, of course!javascript:void(0)javascript:void(0)javascr ipt:void(0)

sorry for my awful grammar and orthografy, english is, as everybody just discovered, not my language.