Do You Believe in Free Will?

[crystalonyx]

Free will must exist in a chaotic universe, determinism is impossible.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

"Assuming no god, there are no negatives to doing bad, either. " -> Pure nonsense


Killing someone is bad.
asuming no God.
familymembers from killed person must live on without killed person.
Life is harder for familymembers. (in the past because they had a hunter less, nowadays because we miss them)

revenge! (now that can be pretty negative. We used to solve the revenges ourselves. Nowadays we use the police and law for it.)


Give me an example of something else wich we both see as bad and I'll give you an example of the negative effect it can have.

What makes any of this "bad"? Sentiment? What if I think it's to my personal advantage to toss it the window? Why not do what's pleasing to my sensibilities since we all wind up dead anyway? Why should I care?

People miss the point of the question: if good exists, there must be a way to distinguish it from bad other than personal likes and dislikes.

 

[meogi]

What makes any of this "bad"? Sentiment? What if I think it's to my personal advantage to toss it the window? Why not do what's pleasing to my sensibilities since we all wind up dead anyway? Why should I care?

Nothing says you have to. The reasons most people DO care is societal pressure. Revenge, jail, repayment; they're all deterants.

Most cultures no longer use divine authority to justify their actions... even if they may be based on such an idea. Society/culture determines morals more than God.

People miss the point of the question: if good exists, there must be a way to distinguish it from bad other than personal likes and dislikes.

Why, exactly?

 

[Storm]

Free will must exist in a chaotic universe, determinism is impossible.

I heard a rather cogent argument recently that determinism is necessary to materialism (the philosophical position). After all, if we're just machines made of meat, does that not mean we're slaves to our programming?

 

[meogi]

After all, if we're just machines made of meat, does that not mean we're slaves to our programming?

We are slaves of our programming... luckily our programming allows for self-adapted changes, ala memory. There is a complex communication between our brain and our genes. Free will, so to speak.

Let me go find the entry in Genome that helps explain this.

 

[.lava]

Yes? No? Why or why not?

My inclination is to think that our choices are not entirely free. That is, we have a choice of A, B, and C in a given situation. Using reason, we can choose one course of action while rejecting the other two.

That is, I can choose one career path over another. etc

Thoughts?

James

i agree. we have free wills but there is also destiny factor. so those situations appear as A, B and C are maybe from destiny, at least at certain point, i believe they are. we use free will to choose or not to choose an option. i mean, you donot need many options to do that.



.

 

[Willamena]

What makes any of this "bad"? Sentiment? What if I think it's to my personal advantage to toss it the window? Why not do what's pleasing to my sensibilities since we all wind up dead anyway? Why should I care?

People miss the point of the question: if good exists, there must be a way to distinguish it from bad other than personal likes and dislikes.

Why does sentiment get tossed out the window? That would seem to be the salient factor that distinguishes bad from other values. Edit: One of them, at least.

 

[UnTheist]

I heard a rather cogent argument recently that determinism is necessary to materialism (the philosophical position). After all, if we're just machines made of meat, does that not mean we're slaves to our programming?

I think so, but our "programming" is very complex and mysterious nonetheless

 

[logician]

If someone thinks we have no free will, then please present the model that is a predictor of every decision we make, because there must be one.

 

[Storm]

I think so, but our "programming" is very complex and mysterious nonetheless

Which is what grants us the illusion of free will, no?

If someone thinks we have no free will, then please present the model that is a predictor of every decision we make, because there must be one.

I don't believe it, but....

There is no such model because our understanding if the brain is not complete. However, materialism implies that we are merely DNA machines, our every action dictated by evolutionary programming. Where, then, is there room for free will?

 

[UnTheist]

Which is what grants us the illusion of free will, no?

An illusion? Sure. I'm not exactly sure what "free will" is, though. Maybe I should read the entire thread

 

[meogi]

If someone thinks we have no free will, then please present the model that is a predictor of every decision we make, because there must be one.

To quote: Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine.
Taken together, the patterns consistently predicted whether test subjects eventually pushed a button with their left or right hand -- a choice that, to them, felt like the outcome of conscious deliberation.

Yes, it doesn't rule out free will, but it's a step toward understanding what that process might be.


Also, two interesting quotes from Genome that I found:

Referring to our willingness to discard freewill; aka, accountability

Full responsibility for one's actions is a necessary fiction without which the law would flounder, but it is a fiction all the same. To the extent that you act in character you are responsible for your actions; yet acting in character is merely expressing the many determinisms that caused your character. David Hume found himself impaled on this dilemma, subsequently named Hume's fork. Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are random, in which case we are not responsible for them. In either case, common sense is outraged and society impossible to organise.

On the paradox: "Unless our behaviour is random, then it is determined. If it is determined, then it is not free. And yet we feel, and demonstrably are, free."

Recall that, when discussing chromosome 10, I described how the stress response consists of genes at the whim of the social environment, not vice versa. If genes can affect behaviour and behaviour can affect genes, then the causality is circular. And in a system of circular feedbacks, hugely unpredictable results can follow from simple deterministic processes.

This kind of notion goes under the name of chaos theory. ... Unlike quantum physics, it does not rest on chance. Chaotic systems, as defined by mathematicians, are determined, not random. But the theory holds that even if you know all the determining factors in a system, you may not be able to predict the course it will take, because of the way different causes can interact with each other. Even simply determined systems can behave chaotically. They do so partly because of reflexivity, whereby one action affects the starting conditions of the next action, so small effects become larger causes. The trajectory of the stock market index, the future of the weather and the 'fractal geometry' of a coastline are all chaotic systems: in each case, the broad outline or course of events is predictable, but the precise details are not. We know it will be colder in the winter than summer, but we cannot tell whether it will snow next Christmas Day.

Human behaviour shares these characteristics. Stress can alter the expression of genes, which can affect the response to stress and so on. Human behaviour is therefore unpredictable in the short term, but broadly predictable in the long term. Thus at any instant in the day, I can choose not to consume a meal. I am free not to eat. But over the course of the day it is almost a certainty that I will eat. The timing of my meal may depend on many things - my hunger (partly dictated by my genes), the weather (chaotically determined by myriad external factors), or somebody else's decision to ask me out to lunch (he being a deterministic being over whom I have no control). This interaction of genetic and external influences makes my behaviour unpredictable, but not undetermined. In the gap between those words lies freedom.

 

[Rolling_Stone]

One of the interesting things about this subject is that people generally approach the question from the bottom up. Doing so is an a priori assumption that free will (or what we perceive as free will) can be explained by the interactions of matter-energy, i.e., matter-energy being the cause of consciousness and at least the appearance free will. As a result, we get all kinds of convoluted and twisted ideas.

What must be in order for what is to be as it is? In answering, we should remember:

• Every effect requires a cause equal to or greater than the effect
• If consciousness is greater than but not not separate from matter-energy and the greater is, the greater must be eternally.

So, does free will exist? Yes, but limited inasmuch as we identify with the lesser.

Oh, I can hear the protests now. "These are a priori assumptions." Well, yeah, they are. But let's also be honest: no one is “neutral” or “objective” in the sense of not bringing their presuppositions to the table. Even the idea of reasonable neutrality is an a priori assumption.

[I've decided to ignore anti-theists from here on out for this reason. They spend all of their time and energy denying and ridiculing theism and very little elaborating on their own beliefs with respect to ultimate causation. They seem to think that by denying and ridiculing theistic concepts of free will and describing the mechanics they somehow automatically establish the superiority of their “rationalism.” But refutation is more than denial, and ridicule and mechanistic descriptions. To be consistent, it must demonstrate and explain in a positive sense the comprehensibility, coherence and consistency the motive power in terms of the engine. Failing in that, it says nothing.]

 

[logician]

To quote: Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them

free."

This is not a model, it's an experiment, this just says that the brain reacts differently to making different decisions, certainly not a surprising result.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

i don't know gota ask god if his plan is to make me anser yes or no

Stop wasting time, whatever you answer is going to be in His will.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

Yes? No? Why or why not?

My inclination is to think that our choices are not entirely free. That is, we have a choice of A, B, and C in a given situation. Using reason, we can choose one course of action while rejecting the other two.

That is, I can choose one career path over another. etc

Thoughts?

James

We are free to choose a path but not the outcome of those decisions, ie. to reject Christ or to accept Him.

If you truly believe in free will then will yourself to overcome gravity without any mechanical means.

 

[meogi]

This is not a model, it's an experiment, this just says that the brain reacts differently to making different decisions, certainly not a surprising result.

This says that the brain decidess up to 7 seconds before 'free will' is suposedly expressed. I never claimed it to be a model, it's just a step to understanding what (if anything) free will is.

 

[ChristineES]

We have choices, so there would be free will. Even if the choices are limited.

 

[BucephalusBB]

We have choices

This is allready the debatable part

 

[ChristineES]

So we have no choices? Do you believe that we are predestined to choose whatever path we take? I never thought so. Every decision is weighed by facts-- if we ignore some facts, we may come up with a different choice than if we don't ignore those facts. Choice can also be weighed by experience- "the last time I did ______, ____ happened so this time I will ______". Why remember experiences at all if they are not going to help you grow? Why have intelligence if we make the same decision anyway? It just doesn't add up to me that we don't have free will.