My Basic Thought On Free Will

[etxel]

I think true pure free will doesn't exist. Meaning that, assuming that the world we live in follows the laws of physics, then everything that happens is the result of prior events (without exception, anything that doesn't would be violating the laws of physics), the only exception is the very first event (whatever that maybe).

The human body is made of material that also follows physical laws.

Everything you do and think is the result of something that happened before and it all traces back to that first event.

My argument is this:

1. We live in a physical world where everything is governed by physical LAWS (otherwise it would be metaphysical or something)

2. Then every event is the result of prior events. Ie, for something to happen something has to make it happen. For a stone to be airborne someone has to throw it. Otherwise, it would lay there forever until something else happens to it.

3. Assuming that the human body, neurons, cells, heart, EVERYTHING, also follows physical properties, which they do, then, just like the rolling stone, something has to happen that makes us take a certain decision. And that something is also governed by physical laws.

For example, I stab someone. Why did I do that? Well, my hand had a knife and it was thrusted forward. My hand was powered by a muscle which was activated by a neuron, which was activated by another neuron, which was activated by another neuron, which was activated by a bunch of neurons (my brain). And what activated those bunch of neurons resulting in me deciding and carrying out my action. Well, yet more neurons!! But where did it all start? Well, there is infinite possibilities, but one of those possibilities is:

1. As a child, a person's skin pain neurons were activated every day because he kept being beat up at school. Those pain signals went up to activate the angry part of the brain (neurons) daily so this part of brain is well developed (triggered to produce more and bigger neurons). The person now as a 30 year old accountant. He is at a bar, when suddenly his ear drum moves to the sound of "f**ck you" which goes up the ear neurons and activates those juiced up angry neurons, they're so juiced up and powerful that they activate the decision part of the brain towards the threshold where he decides to take a knife and stab the other guy.

Well, you can theoretically get a lot more detailed than this, and even go to the molecular level to really find out what triggered what. And also trace all the events back to when the person was a 1 year old, when he was in mom's belly, to when he was a sperm and egg, and then trace the sperm and egg back and keep going until you find that all of that is the result of that very first event.

And along the course of events since that first event, matter (following physics laws) has interacted in a way that allows what we call life, mind, thought, and the illusion that our thoughts and actions are not determined by prior events and physical laws but by our "free will".

Thats the way I see it. Of course there is the argument that its not all physics because what if there's a soul etc etc. Well, then if my soul makes me take bad decisions, then its not my free will either because I didn't choose to have the soul I have.

[obss]

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...if you reproduced the universe exactly, down to quantum states that were collapsed into and not, you would get the same decision from a human every single time.

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Thanks to mr. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the quantum mechanics was born and the causal determinism theory died. Thanks to it, nothing can be reproduced exactly and I think that somewhere down its building blocks the free will itself is in debt to the same incredible, revolutionary assumption of this above-genius physician.

I would even say that in the middle of that sklanskian logicland lays the same Uncertainty Principle.

[etxel]

Yes, but even if the world is not deterministic, I think that still everything that happens, (including people's) actions is governed by the laws of physics, whether the particle is here or there, or in a probability cloud, it still is governed by something that we can't control (whether quantum physics apply or not).
I don't know much about quantum mechanics but I know they are really interesting and not always intuitive. Maybe you know something eye-opening that I don't know.

[Hoi Polloi]

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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?

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Choice implies alternatives. No alternate, no free will.

[tedtodd]

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My Basic Thought On Free Will

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nm...i thought it said 'free wii'

[Fish Bot]

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But not even religious people suggest that so I'm starting with the assumption that it isn't true.



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That is not entirely true, most religious people believe in free will, but there are still a large number of people who do not.

As you said in your original post free will has to be correctly defined before we can determine whether it actually exists. I tend to think the most common definition of free will in the religious since is the ability to choose between good and evil. According to that definition free will cannot exist because humans from birth only desire evil because we are all born with a sin nature (according to the bible).

If you step back and take a look at our every day decisions in life, for example whether or not you take a shower in the morning is based on your desires. If you wake up and feel dirty you will desire to clean yourself, some people rarely have a desire to clean themselves. People cannot change their desires; your desires cannot be willed differently than what they are. People choose to do that which they desire, and desires cannot be created or changed, therefore we are all slaves to our desires. So the real question is not whether we all have free will, it’s where do our desires come from.

For humans to truly have free will our "will" would have to act independently of our desires or any other outside factor. This means that you would have to exist in an unconscious state of comatose while your "will" made all decisions for your life.

The fact is logically there can be no such thing as free will because it is not possible for our will to act separately from our desires. We “Will” the things we desire, and desires cannot be willed.