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Do Atheists believe in free-will?
- Thread starter SPLogan
- Start date
Don't ya just love mantras? It's a bit like hanging a clove a garlic around your next ...
MSizer
MSizer
Do you think we have a monthly meeting to vote for our unanimous stance on matters?
Of course many do believe in free will, some don't, and I myself happen to be undecided.
David Hume made a strong argument against free will in pointing out that if we have the power of free will, then we have the ability to generate thoughts that are not contingent on previous events. Therefore, in order to posess free will, our thoughts would have to be completely spontaneous and unrelated to anything that is going on.
However, while I know that free will may be an illusion, it sure feels real, so until I find a strong argument against Hume's observation, I'm on the fence, but hoping to be able to some day argue strongly for free will.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Do football players believe in astrology?
dust1n
Zindīq
I find that even if our thoughts were generated solely based off information, that doesn't necessarily mean that they were of our own free will.
Before I dropped out of college, I do remember having quite a delightful conversation in my philosophy class. My teacher was bring up the idea that some believe that free will relies on the unpredictable, in which quantum uncertainty might be the place where free will exercises. She then discussed the fact that that wasn't necessarily free will either, if it's based off random occurrences taking place on atomic levels. It's just random, which isn't free will any more than the determined.
Personally, I don't even know what free will is. Wouldn't know how to define it.
"Will" in itself is blurry enough.
dust1n
Zindīq
Actually, I don't know if there is one football (American) player who knows what astrology is.
:sorry1:
FlyingTeaPot
Irrational Rationalist. Educated Fool.
Alceste
Vagabond
I agree with this.
Wampus and I discussed this question at length the other day - AFAICR he doesn't believe in free will at all, whereas I believe (and have observed) that with conscious choice and concentrated effort people can change the nature of their experiences, character, behavior and perceptions. On the other hand, it isn't easy to do and most don't bother to do it. While he doesn't deny that this appears to occur, he does not believe it is an example of the concept of "free will" because the desire and ability to do this work is influenced by circumstances outside the power of the individual. To him "free will" means absolutely free of influence from any single factor that lies outside our control. So no wonder he doesn't believe in it - we can never be entirely disconnected from the rest of the biosphere of which we make up a part. To me, "free will" is an entirely pragmatic concept - if I want to quit smoking and lose 10 pounds, can I do it if I set my mind to it? Of course. However oppressive our circumstances may be, we always have some wiggle room - that's where personal responsibility comes in.
So, to sum up, I have decided the question is meaningless. "Free will" is not a useful concept for me at all, since it is next to impossible for any two people to agree on what it means without a framework of Christian religious dogma to refer to. (Namely, the dichotomy of "good and evil", "heaven and hell" and the need to explain via some internally coherent mythology why a "good" god allows evil to exist and sends people to hell).
Does Free Will even exist except as an artificial concept to counter some of the expected consequences of the claimed existence of the Abrahamic God, or as the extreme that opposes absolute Determinism?
Myself, I find the idea of "believing" in Free Will rather odd. It is quite inconsequential a concept.
Myself, I find the idea of "believing" in Free Will rather odd. It is quite inconsequential a concept.
Yerda
Veteran Member
Yes. The one book I've read on the matter didn't mention God, and the author made it clear that he believed determinism and indeterminism were irrelevant.
Satans_Serrated_Edge
Deicidal
Interesting thread. I have not read the entire 11 pages, but am just responding to the OP, so if any of this has been covered, so be it.
Freewill as something above/separate from causality is really an appeal to 'magic', which isn't something I can logically justify. Everything is causality.
On the other hand we 'do' make choices. That we can only experience causality in one direction, and do not have the predictive ability to calculate the enormous amount of contributing causes of any one event, or how said causes would effect any given outcome, leads to a very convincing 'illusion' that we are controllers rather than observers of our own consciousness.
We have 'freewill' in the same way a movie or a book has 'freewill'. We do not, and can not, know what is going to happen most of the time, but objectively our perception of events does not effect the web of causality from moving forward just the same.
Do we have freewill? No, but because we experience time in a linear fashion, the illusion is indistinguishable from the real McCoy.
Freewill as something above/separate from causality is really an appeal to 'magic', which isn't something I can logically justify. Everything is causality.
On the other hand we 'do' make choices. That we can only experience causality in one direction, and do not have the predictive ability to calculate the enormous amount of contributing causes of any one event, or how said causes would effect any given outcome, leads to a very convincing 'illusion' that we are controllers rather than observers of our own consciousness.
We have 'freewill' in the same way a movie or a book has 'freewill'. We do not, and can not, know what is going to happen most of the time, but objectively our perception of events does not effect the web of causality from moving forward just the same.
Do we have freewill? No, but because we experience time in a linear fashion, the illusion is indistinguishable from the real McCoy.
I.S.L.A.M617
Illuminatus
If you ask me, Atheism is free will
So how does that book define Free Will then?
doppelganger
Through the Looking Glass
For those "atheists" who believe in "free will" answer the following question:
What is the will?
In your response, explain both the physical location of the will and how it can be observed as a thing, and also the mechanics of how it is "free."
What is the will?
In your response, explain both the physical location of the will and how it can be observed as a thing, and also the mechanics of how it is "free."
If it does, isn't that to say it exists?
Uh, no. It seems to me instead that the concept is actually meaningless and shouldn't be used at all.
How do you define Free Will?
St Giordano Bruno
Well-Known Member
IMHO atheists would be as evenly split on free will as theists would be. Some theists such as Calvinists believe God determines every action we do even murder so they believe it is only God who truly has free will and we are his little puppets. Other atheists on the other hand quote Benjamin Libet and Patrick Haggard through their experiments which give weight to the view that the brain is already acting at least a second before we think we made a decision. Other atheists may believe those experiment are inconclusive. I think the jury is still out.