TOPIC: Do you think we have free will?

Aspect wrote: In actuality you're overcomplicating something so simple by chalking up free will to people being "random" and using buzz words.

"me" (my consciousness) if I choose to kill someone because I can will have an impact on where this hypothetical "rollercoaster" takes me because it'll be a fast pass to jail pal a sad life which I chose.

The fact you even say probably at the bold point shows free will because you can't actually assume just because a computer is present people will actually use it, why not? because people have free will to do whatever they please.

If I have a restaurant that's closer, I might go to the one further away because I like their food more, because I have my own tastes because I have free will

Lewis_is_java wrote:
Buzzwords? I've tried to not use buzzwords lol.

You "killed someone" because it was in your brain chemistry to do so. Your motivation "I felt like it" was just a normal response that can be said about anything "I ate this bagel because I felt like it" when in actuality your brain had a sense of hunger. If a calculator has free will because it outputs Y when you put in X then yes, you are right about free will.

I said "probably" because that's the best we got as humans. I can't just dig into your brain and inspect your neurons 1 by 1 and predict your entire day. I can only make statistical assumptions.

Yeah you might indeed take the restaurant further away. That's because your brain had a luster for a particular food. That's an argument that strengthens my thesis not yours.

Aspect wrote: Buzzwords and verbosity

My brain chemistry made me kill someone, I'll let the judge know it wasn't my fault but some chemicals aye. obviously not many choices lead to a moment like that, not just some random chemicals at a point and time

And even if you could inspect neurons 1 by 1 you couldn't predict an entire day, because I'll change what I do based on tiny things like whether or what friends and family are doing, I might even give up something I would prefer to do to something else someone wants to do because free will grants me the power to do so, I could give up my food that my brain had such a magnitude of luster for to someone who has no food because my free will and empathy as a human allows me to choose the needs of an other over my own.

Also they could be the same restaurant with the same food, I just as my own person prefer that place more

Lewis_is_java wrote:
I asked what buzzword you were complaining about so I know what to avoid to type.

You're participating in a society where it doesn't matter what internal motivation you had for killing someone. That doesn't really have anything to do with my point though.

Yes I agree. Good point! Inspecting your neurons isn't enough. I'd have to inspect everyones' brains. I'd also have to inspect how your brain changes based on new experiences. Assuming I did all of that, I'd be able to predict your entire day, what decisions you make. If you really have free will I shouldn't be able to predict it right?

Yeah you may also prefer that place more. Maybe it's the staff working there that you like, maybe it's a table, maybe the view, maybe the architecture, or maybe it's to try and disprove that life is deterministic so you take the restaurant you like less!

These things can all be predicted. If your behavior can be predicted you don't really have free will.

yes we have free will how is this even a question unless ur religious or retarded

Denis wrote:
Religious people generally believe in free will but of course they include their god of choice in the equation

Aspect wrote: You think just neurons are responsible for thought? what if I'm stressed and my body is shitting out cortisol and epinephrine, is this not going to effect my thoughts, processes and choices? how about the fact that whatever is stressing me out will not stress someone else, because they can perceive situations differently and may be more composed thanks to free will and individuality, without free will we're all the same.

And I think Denis put it best,
we have free will how is this even a question unless ur retarded

Lewis_is_java wrote:
So your argument is: "It's really hard to reverse engineer the brain so therefore free will is a thing"?

A dice has free will, it decides which number to land on how is this even a question unless ur'e retarded

Ok so quick update I have since spoke with nyarli on this topic and he has explained to me that philosophy does not actually need to follow formal logic so I’m changing the groups of ppl who would seriously consider this question to: retards, religious people or philosophers or some mix

Denis wrote:
agree

I guess it depends. Like in some situations you don't have free will, lets say you are a deer on the side of the road and some guy in his small car with a massive and loud exhaust comes speeding down the lane at 100 MPH. As a deer your natural instincts take over and you try to get away from the noise (therefore danger) as quickly as possible. Little do you know, you have just charged into the road and been beheaded by the car, who's driver then has the audacity to say HE has been hit.

Instincts take over and you are forced to react.

Pie_ wrote: Wrong, all deers are insurance fraudsters. Fucking animals.

It’s a paradox man they’re coming.

Lewis_is_java wrote: These are all involuntary emotions though. However I don’t think this excludes the possibility of free will. Aspect makes a very strong case for determinism but I think you definitely still have choices. I decided to come on the forums and open a random thread. This decision (which was probably influenced by other decisions before it) brought me to a crossroads. I could have closed the tab and not responded or I could have taken way too much time to make a response like I’m doing now. I was free in making that choice but I wasn’t free in the choices I had if that makes sense.

Yes.

After reading through all of this, I have to say that I'm definitely feeling like there's a lot of emphasis on deontology (the means) and little emphasis on consequentialism (the ends). It feels like there're a considerable amount of people saying "Your every action is impacted by the environment you're in and therefore you don't have free will," but I think the more pressing point is:

Free will speaks to whether our actions are ultimately our own, or if they're preordained by some external force. Not our environment, not our personal circumstances, but by something that has written our journey for us before we had a chance to get a say in the matter.

Free will is suggesting that everything we do is determined by ourselves. And yes, while our choices are motivated by our environment, by our upbringing, by our experiences, we have final say on what we do. What makes us human is that we have the ability to think, feel and share our experiences with those who come after us.

Industry, morality, the very nature of questioning everything, it's all provoked by one human saying "I don't like that this exists." "I don't like that this hasn't been questioned." "I want to leave a mark on the world, one that will remain long after I'm gone."

To play devil's advocate, you could suggest that all of this is an ultra-complicated way of some creator giving us the ability to think for ourselves. But therein lies the key phrase.

Think for ourselves. This world has people who challenged society itself. Who dared to stand up to the way things are, and say that the way things are should change.

Without going on for too long, yes. I think we have free will.

Addendum: Yes, you can suggest that it's more simple than that, and that free will might be as simple as are our actions ever our own, or the product of what came before us? I dare say yes, they are our own. But it's a complicated line of thought.

Father Watson wrote: That's not the major problem here though. We can THINK that we think for ourselves but that doesn't mean that all of the choices we make aren't predetermined.

If you do believe in a god, free will becomes evermore illogical. Most classical gods (God, Allah, Buddha etc.) represent the pinnacle of morality. Why would a god willingly create humans with free will if free will entails the possibility to do great evil. I can choose to go and bomb an animal shelter full of adorable puppies right now. Why would a god that wishes to purge the world of all evil create beings with the ability to commit evil. The fact that people do in fact commit evil deeds can be reasoned away as some sort of "force of evil" (e.g. the devil) manipulating the determined world. People have tried to formulate answers to this question but all of them fall short in one aspect or another (try reading Plantinga's Free Will Defense to the problem of evil if you don't mind torturing yourself). Obviously this only answers the problem of free will vs. determinism in the presence of a (classical (omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect)) god. If there is no (classical) god, then all we can do is speculate and theorize.

Shark wrote:
To offer a counter to this argument and respectfully disagree, that is the major problem.

Kant suggests that the metaphysical state of mind is down to two things; good and evil. Do I do what I do because it's right, or wrong?

The binary, black and white thinking is the pinnacle of what stands on top of a lot of pivotal decisions throughout history. Do the ends justify the means? The problem with morality is that if your ends justify your means, you can justify any number of bad actions. Everyone has their own ends, and this usually boils down to our pursuit of our perfect world. Ayn Rand had an incredibly flawed belief system in objectivism, but it's accurate in that the majority of people will pursue their endgame no matter who it might inconvenience. Even people who claim to be "empaths" are pursuing their goals at the expense of someone else's endgame.

Rambling aside, the fundamental argument of if our actions are our own, if they're predetermined, is a creator-fixated question, as it essentially states that no matter how we approach life, our path is set in stone because it's already been written by the invisible hand of something beyond our comprehension.

Coming back to the concept of simplifying it to - are our paths predetermined by environment, upbringing and essentially what came before, you could make a good argument for this, and countless philosophers have, but I can't stress enough that what creator, what free will can exist, if we cannot think for ourselves?

Are we playing out some almighty script? Think the observer effect. If we tell someone we're going to watch what they're doing, will they not immediately change what their usual M.O. out of fear of being judged? Even if it's a little change.

There are so many little variables challenging that concept of determinism, because no matter how you attempt to suggest that all of this is one set path, how could it be?

Even the multiverse theory, which suggests that there are limitless realities which play out limitless versions of the same scenario, you could argue that every little action is fundamentally played out by someone wanting something a little differently than the other, thinking of it a different way to ultimately want a different outcome.

Tl;Dr - how do you justify freedom of thought not being a factor of free will when it's that that allows us the ability to make our every choice, question our every choice, and ultimately look back on our choices?

When you're aware of your own existence, does the way you approach existence change?

I'm aware that there are a lot of counters to these arguments, but this is fun. I feel like we could fill a book with arguments for and against determinism and free will.

Father Watson wrote: Books upon books have already been filled with arguments for and against hahahahaha!

All of these variables you are proposing, however, change nothing in the face of pure determinism. There would be no such thing as "free thought" as all of our thoughts would be predetermined too. Every factor that leads to a decision is predetermined. Being observed, put under pressure or in any other fashion manipulated wouldn't "change" our decisions either, as the manipulation itself would have been predetermined. In this sense, determinism is an entirely dogmatic concept.

Who's to say every universe in the multiverse isn't determined itself? This would obviously lead to a massive paradox as there would have to be a universe where free will does indeed exist. Definitely not the only problem a multiverse would pose to our current beliefs and logic but quite important to consider in this context.

I'd love put more time and thought into this discussion but I'm afraid I'm too busy studying way less interesting (in my opinion) philosophical subjects at the moment (one of my main classes this semester was analytical philosophy please end my suffering).

EDIT: analytical philosophy is probably one of if not the most promising field for finding actual answers to this problem. That doesn't make me abhor it any less nor do I have any idea where to begin looking due to a general lack of interest.

Shark wrote:
I'm afraid I've been tackling this from a moral philsophy standpoint, as that's sort of my area of expertise. But studying philosophy is always going to be a headache, because there're way too many factors involved, every friggin' suggestion I make could be countered with the opposite, because that's what the world is - a whole bunch of "Yeah, buts." Ad infinitum. The inherent issue with determinism is the same one with free will, and the same one with religion, and atheism - every argument for, can be made against it, because neither has any concrete proof.

I like to think we have free will, only because I look at the world and think that there was no way that any intelligent creator, and no way determinism brought us to this place where we are. We're on the road to destruction, then we're not, then we are, then we're not, we're reaching new heights of discovery, then we're way behind, then we are, then we're not. Our world is an indecisive big bitch that makes its decisions out of necessity and curiosity. A giant "What does this button do?"

At least, that's how I see it. Again, you could literally take my argument and turn it on its head - but I think that's part of the fun of it, knowing that no one answer is the absolutely correct one... even if it is gonna drive you up the effing wall.

Finally, if you're looking for people to look into, try Immanuel Kant's metaphysics, the Greek classical philosophers, like Plato, try Nietzche, or even Buddha. Buddhism is actually one of the sources of the very aspect of nihilism, despite the consistent emphasis on balance and minimalism. Though, I think it was meant more in a "This is how *not* to think" kind of way.