Free will
 

Does it exist, yes or no? Subject came up in the shout box and I though it'd be an interesting thread.

I say no, but I'm interested to hear what MBers think. And there is no neutral option in the poll, sorry!

Damnit, can one of the mods add a poll?

Thanks a million to the ghost mod.

The fact that you have asked this question demonstrates that it does, whether it be an illusion in a relative sense or not. I've made the decision to reply to this thread and add a poll for you. The exact chain of chemical and electrical reactions which led to this decision are irrelevant if in my conscious mind I believe I have chosen to make it.

I'd say my action of making this thread is a result of my inherently curious nature and that I like debates of this kind (see previous threads I've started for examples).

Edited to add: I see more of what you're saying, but your arguing that choice is only an illusion then? Does that make free will exist then?

I will have more to say later, but I have to go at the moment.

Please remember to flush.

Yes. It exists. Otherwise this post that i'm currently posting would have been created already. Thus creating no free will for me. I would be posting posts that have already been created, therefore creating a forum made of robot posters with posts already created.

Make sense???

Now is that a choice I make or a natural response to the smell of defecation?

i'll take the stand of Philip K. Dick free will is illusory

it's all predestined

time is linear

you have already made choices before your brain thinks you had a choice

I'd say free will exists in those instances when you can't make up your damned mind, people just find it easier to rely on social obligations, natural instinct, their own experience ect. to make decisions for them. You find it when confronted with situations you're unfamiliar with and have nothing to base an expected outcome on, so yeah I'd say exists but it's a bitch nobody wants to rely on.

I'd say in those situations it's the natural instinct we base our decisions on.

I think 'choice' is a concept made up by humans to explain why we pursue one action instead of another, cause there really is only one outcome and no parallel universe. And free will is the human mind wanting to blame.

Also, what Il Duce said.

But would those decisions not be difficult to make because of the lack of instinct to guide us? unless the roll of a dice is divinely controlled the outcome is going to be unpredictable. Suppose you have natural instinct and social etiquette both pushing for contradictory actions, if you fail to find one more appealing than the other would you not be left with a choice of which one to let guide you?

Life is not predetermined. Only mental cases would think in such a way.

Obviously. We had a choice to vote yes or no and we are free to choose either option. And we are free to choose which idea we agree with.

Your "choice" is the result of a bunch of chemical reactions and neurons in your brain.

Which are controlled by me. I just hit myself on the head.

That's just a load of ****. Im not saying what you said isn't true but it's stupid. Its like saying we aren't alive, our heart is just pumping and our brain is thinking.

Then it's the chemical reactions which give us a free will. And they're some very complex chemical reactions because there are many choices in life and if those reactions weren't complex and didn't vary person to person, we'd all be making the Same choices over and over.

The above pretty much sums it up.

When we look closely at a flower, we see that it is made up of many smaller components, eventually down to the microscopic level. When they're examined closely, we can indentify these individual parts which make up the whole. When we examine big picture, it is simply a flower.

The flower is not an illusion, it is simply the whole of the object — the result of the billions of combinations which build upon each other.

Just because the process of choice takes place as a result of chemical reactions and electrical impulses doesn't make free will non existent, it is simply the make up of it, the very structure, the building blocks of free will itself.

But that's not why some say free will doesn't exist. It's the thinking that you never really had free will, it's just a reaction your brain makes to a given situation based on your past experiences and your genetic makeup, basically biological determinism.

I think prison, for example, isn't punishment but rehabiliation.

There's more to it than just th chemical reactions alone. So the chemical reactions and neurons of others don't become a factor? I'd have to say they do.

To quote an article from psychology today:

"Mechanistically speaking, you could say that although we may not have free will at the level of the neuron, we do have free won’t at the conscious level.

Why? Because consciousness is a mental state, and because free will is a reality in the mentalistic universe of other people’s minds even if it is not in the physical world of the brain. This is why consciousness needs a veto: only consciousness can allow for the mental factor of other people’s possible reactions. Consider a simple scenario: that of a fugitive and his pursuers. The fugitive, by definition, is free—indeed, he is determined to remain free. But the question is: how free? And in what sense is he free?

*
Suppose the pursuers know that the fugitive is likely to resort to location A with the highest probability (his home, say), B with less probability (his family perhaps), or C with less likelihood still (for example, acquaintances), and so on, with decreasing probability for each subsequent suspected place of refuge. If the fugitive thinks for a moment, he immediately realizes that the pursuers will think this. In other words, he becomes conscious of what they might do, and in practice exercises normal mind-reading skills (something which an autistic fugitive might not do at all, or do badly). What this means is that the fugitive instantly sees that, wherever he goes, he is not free to visit A, almost certainly not B, and probably not C either. However, knowing that his pursuers cannot cover all possible refuges at one time, he might decide to go to some very improbable ones, say X, Y, or Z. But there again, he might reflect that, if he is sure his pursuers will foresee that he might think this, he might consider A, B, or C after all on the premise that, since he is expected to go there first, they will not look for him there if they anticipate his reaction to their reaction. Nevertheless, the fugitive cannot rule out his pursuers foreseeing this in its turn and therefore continuing to search for him at A, B, and C—which once again suggests somewhere like X, Y or Z…*

*
Considerations like this show that free will is a reality, but it is one that relates to the mental world of other people, not to the physical world of neurons."

Go to sleep or something Tuna. You couldn't ever win this argument.

Cut the condescending bull****, you have contributed nothing of value to this thread other than insulting people who disagree with you. Right now you just look like a cocksucker.

Blastingas, it may be hard for me to articulate this as it is a philosophical argument so I have trouble wording it. Here are some links though that you may find interesting.

Michael S. Gazzaniga: Free Will Is an Illusion, but You're Still Responsible for Your Actions - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Is Free Will an Illusion?: Scientific American

I'll give 'em read, tuna.

"Imagine a universe in which everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. So what happened in the beginning of the universe caused what happened next and so on, right up to the present. If John decided to have french fries at lunch one day, this decision, like all others, was caused by what happened before it."

I do agree with this. And I do agree that we don't have free will in the sense that there are only so many choices we can make, although that may be a very large number of choices to be made in a lifetime, those choices are still within the realm of possibilities. So in that sense, there is a limit to our choices and therefore a limit to our freewill. I don't think freewill is infinite or anything like that, but I do believe that it is large enough to make correct calculations and hypotheses A hard thing to accomplish.

Oh and I just wanted to say, since Goofle seems to be under the impression that I'm trying to win an argument, I'm always open to anything you may have about free will existing. This thread wasn't about winning an argument (free will is after all, a philosophical debate), but just to see what others thought about the subject. Thanks for giving your opinion respectfully.

My first comment may have seemed a little Disrespectful because of my choice of vocabulary and phrasing, but it wasn't intended to be that way if you took it like that, but I don't think you did. I just wanted to make that clear because you are one of the most respectful members here, in my opinion. So, I try to remain respectful when I talk to you, you've been respectful to me.

Now back to the topic.

i was in the midst of typing this yesterday, Tuna, but the timer cut me off

recent science suggests that there can be parallel universes, and multiverses

however, my own 2 cents to this is even if we can traverse to alternate universes, you'd still find another you who was bound to the "predestination" of that universe, and choices he made would still not have been choices of his own free will

if you want to trade places with an "alternate" you, you'd find yourself being bound to the "fatalism" of that universe

not to mention you'd probably go insane, cos the laws are different

This. I simply don't understand how, in a universe where everything is mathematically calculable, free will just happens to exist. The concept of free will just seems like magic to me. Any concept of free will that doesn't include magic or divine power just seems like semantics designed to redefine a word that no longer has any real meaning. If you believe that the universe is deterministic, then just come up with a different word to describe human choice, because "free will" already has a specific cultural meaning and using it only brings confusion.

I think a good example would be music. A lot of people don't like country, but to say someone chose to not like country music is ridiculous. You can't choose to like or not like country, you just do like it or don't like it. I challenge people who don't like country music to explain why they don't like it.

Another example would be food, you don't choose to dislike a certain type of food, it just doesn't appeal to your taste buds.

I admit I haven't research much about parallel universes, but the only way they can exist is if free will does in fact exist, no? Because the idea of a parallel universe is that you had an alternate choice in the first place you could've made that would allow you to alter your destination.

Thanks man, though I admit I could've kept my cool a bit better earlier. :laughing:

I wasn't offended by what you said because you were actually substantiating what you were saying and providing an interesting perspective.

I have found no reason to believe either and yet reason to believe either or both.
The mind itself is powerful and complex enough to make itself believe whatever it wishes/needs to for whatever reason.
One can find an incalculable amount of reasons to prove anything. In the end it is just another concept, a human creation.
A person can convince theirself that an almighty god created the universe and that same person can believe that demons come out of the shower.
Just the same way you can go to work and come to the conclusion that the person over there is into you and that the boss smokes weed all the time (without asking them or conversing with them).

I have a friend who occasionally dreams of the future. He then forgets it until the event happens where he then knows what will happen and what to do.
I can't prove him wrong or right and yet that is what he believes.

If a person does have free will, what do you do knowing that each decision you make will have subtle rippling effects on other people?
If there is no free will, then what use is it to worry about absolutely anything at all?

huh? no - those parallel universes didn't exist because of the divergence of routes taken by you, or even in history

they came into being at the same time as our universe

but of course, there might even be no you in a parallel Earth, as your father could have married somebody else

i don't

Freewill - Rush - YouTube

Sounds pretty real

Hmmm I personally, believe everything is predetermined. I think that time is an illusion made by people ( sounds a little crazy but hear me out )

Everything is constant, the universe, everything in it. Right now, the future, present and past are all happening at the same time, but we introduce time to structure our lives, give it order. We are essentially living at the exact moment our great great grandparents were here, and further, and we are living in the exact moment our children and children's children are living, and the dinosaurs and everything that has ever existed.

Everything has already happened and is already happening.

Talk about a hard concept to wrap your head around. That post made my head spin in circles.

Romantic, but what evidence would we have for believing this?

Wouldn't a lack of free will create an endless loop of the same? Aren't aberrations what create progress?

Maybe aberrations create progress, but who says they have to be a product of choice? It could just be a case of people reacting in a predetermined way to a changing environment.

Or it could be internal, like a genetic mutation of some sort that produces a different response to certain situations.

it could also be a latent meme that varies