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Do you Think we have Free Will

Do you Think we have Free Will


  • Total voters
    59

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
I have absolutely no idea how you are going from 'everything is already decided' to 'therefore, the flow of time is of no consequence'.

I am under the impression that you are mistaking 'the future has already been determined' for 'the future has already happened'.

The future has already been determined because cause and effect apply, but this doesn't mean the future has already happened.


If the future is determined, then in effect it has happened; it exists simultaneously with the past and present. To return to your movie analogy, the film was made before it was shown, and only the act of observation imparts the seeming flow of time.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
And I disagreed there also.



Nope.



It makes much difference.
If my choice is known before I make it, it was never a free choice.



Einstein knew nothing of the sort. Time flows in the direction of the future.
If the future is already set before it occurs, no choice is "free".


No amount of weasling about about the counter-intuitive nature of relativity is going to change this simple thing.
If the future is set, no choice is free.

If the future is set, our experience of events, our part in them, and our entire perception of and relationship with time, is an illusion, yes. Absolutely.

I find this proposition absurd btw, but I’m not sure it’s possible to logically disprove it.
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
If the future is determined, then in effect it has happened; it exists simultaneously with the past and present. To return to your movie analogy, the film was made before it was shown, and only the act of observation imparts the seeming flow of time.

Incorrect. Let me use a more apt analogy: when I say that that the future is determined, what I am saying is that script has been written already and nothing will deviate from it.

A given future F might eventually become present P at which point the movie has been recorded up to P, but the recording only happens at P.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
If the future is set, our experience of events, our part in them, and our entire perception of and relationship with time, is an illusion, yes. Absolutely.

I find this proposition absurd btw, but I’m not sure it’s possible to logically disprove it.
I don't even care to argue against it.

Just pointing out how logically and obviously incompatible it is to have perfect foreknowledge and free will in the same universe.
 
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RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
Incorrect. Let me use a more apt analogy: when I say that that the future is determined, what I am saying is that script has been written already and nothing will deviate from it.

A given future F might eventually become present P at which point the movie has been recorded up to P, but the recording only happens at P.

In which case the future is as certain as the present. And since neither can be apprehended in the present, and in the absence of any property which distinguishes the one from the other, it’s equally impossible to distinguish cause from effect. The laws which appear to govern them become time symmetrical.
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
In which case the future is as certain as the present. And since neither can be apprehended in the present, and in the absence of any property which distinguishes the one from the other, it’s equally impossible to distinguish cause from effect. The laws which appear to govern them become time symmetrical.

I have absolutely no idea how you have reached this conclusion. What distinguishes past, present and future is the flow of time. Nothing else.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
I genuinely see no source for your claim that hard determinism deals strictly with linear math. Can you specify?
I believe I have adequately explained it as well as an earlier source.

I detect a limited comprehension of you ability to read my posts and a failure to respond coherently.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Agreed, but I don't need to. I only need to know the rules of interpreting evidence properly which allow me to predict future outcomes accurately or more accurately.

Did you see these words in this thread written to a different poster? :

"It's exactly the same regarding the question of whether all of experience is an illusion, not just free will. Suppose you somehow learned for an undeniable, iron-clad fact that there was no world outside of your consciousness corresponding to what you experience, that perhaps you are a brain in a vat after all or in some kind of matrix. OK, now that you've had a chance to get over the shock and assimilate and accept the truth of the idea, what are you going to do differently? You now know that what looks like your finger isn't real, and neither is that burning candle, so you will the finger into the flame knowing that no such thing actually exists or is happening, and you feel the pain of fire anyway. Are you going to do that again? No. It's not like you would have a choice if you also lacked free will. NOTHING CHANGES, and this free will matter is the same. Realizing that free will is or might be an illusion changes nothing about how I go on living my life, because as with fingers and flames, what worked before still works following these kinds of revelations."

We don't need to know what really lies beyond the theater of consciousness to navigate and more or less manage the parade of sensations, feelings, memories, urges, intuitions, etc. that comprise conscious experience. The value of belief is to inform decisions and drive actions. Actions then influence events in the external world, or so it appears, and those effects lead to objective consequences.

To reiterate, we should expect similar decisions made under similar circumstances to lead to similar outcomes. The measure of a true or false proposition lies in its capacity to produce expected results. If an idea is true, it can be used to generate predictable consequences, and different ones if that idea turned out to be false. In other words, the ultimate measure of a true proposition is the capacity to inform decisions under the expectation of desirable consequences regardless of what's on the other side of the curtain.

All we need to know is that we have desires and preferences, we make decisions, and we experience sensory perceptions of outcomes. If a man has belief B that some action A will produce desired result D, if B is true, then doing A will achieve D. If A fails to achieve D, then B is false. Either you agree that truth should be measured by its capacity to inform decisions and produce results or you don't.

This is another of those ideas such as free will possibly being an illusion that is a little unsettling when initially countenanced, but with time, becomes acceptable. I live with both every day, and live the same life I did before I accepted those ideas for the reasons given above. The rules work whatever the ultimate nature of reality is. If our lives are foreordained, and one deserves no credit or blame for how they unfold, then all I can say is that I'm happy to have lived this one and am having this enjoyable discussion whatever is responsible.

I'm not asking you or any other Abrahamic theist to join me. Why should you? You have a large investment in the belief that the god of Abraham exists, is honest and benevolent, created our world, and granted man free will the exercise of which can lead to damnation or salvation. If you buy into even the possibility that reality is very different from that, you're on the slippery slope to skepticism, and I'm sure that you're well aware that many religious teachers exhort the faithful to never entertain such thoughts, that they're blasphemous, come from Satan, and can lead to personal destruction.

It's red pill blue pill stuff. Which do you prefer - a comfortable and comforting narrative even if incorrect, or something somewhat unsettling if it happens to be the truth? I chose the latter. Or something chose it for me. It's all good, whatever is actually the case.
I don’t disagree, but I don’t think you addressed the point that I made……… my Pont Bering that you grant that we live in a physical world (and not in the matrix) despite the fact that you can´t prove it empirically………… meaning that your world view is not restricted to only things that you can test empirically as you claimed in a previous post.

Premise 1 you gran that *probably* we live in a physical world

Premise 2: you can´t test premise 1

Therefore sometimes you grant things that can´t be tested.

I am wrong gin any of these points?

Not at all. It just means that those process occur without being freely willed.

Yes, that might be the case, and if it is, I'm OK with it. The believer needs to continue resisting that idea, but his argument is yet another fallacy of consequence (described above). The statement above must be denied, because if it isn't, the consequences would be unacceptable.

Disagree. The methods we have for deciding such things don't require that free will be involved, which is why we can program machines to reproduce that method. Suppose free will is an illusion. You and I robotically add the same column of numbers and come to two different sums as was always foreordained. You seem to be suggesting that those robots have no means to decide which was correct. Sure they do.
i agree that my point doesnt apply to mathematical truths (like the sum of numbers)

But if you have two robots

1 is programed to think that the plantet is 4B+ years old

2 the other is programed to think that the planet is 6,000yo

How can any of the robots know who is correct? robot 2 is programed to reject any evidnece for an old earth

A free agent could look at both world views, compare them and *decide* which is better and more likely to be true , but a robot can´t do that.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
I have absolutely no idea how you have reached this conclusion. What distinguishes past, present and future is the flow of time. Nothing else.

And in a fully deterministic universe, the flow of time exists only from the perspective of the observer. The flow of time in that case, becomes just a perception: it’s real only from our point of view, as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west is real only from our point of view. If the future is already written, then everything we think we know about time is probably wrong, and all bets are off (no bookie will take a bet on an outcome that’s already decided, so that last bit is literally true).
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
I believe I have adequately explained it as well as an earlier source.

I detect a limited comprehension of you ability to read my posts and a failure to respond coherently.

I am reading your posts but you are not addressing the specific points I am bringing up to you. You are the first person to mention that hard determinism deals strictly with Newton's work and linear math.
 

Curious George

Veteran Member
When it comes to science and philosophy I view everything with a skeptical eye. My posts and references which you have not apparently read nor understood. I have researched and studied this issue for over fifty years including college courses on philosophy.
Please respond specifically to the points in my posts and the references I provide,
Yeah, I haven’t read any of your responses in this thread. I have no idea to what you are referring, or why you took personally something that was not meant to be personal even to the poster to which it was addressed.
 

Curious George

Veteran Member
As far as recommending skepticism to others, you're a theist (faith-based thinker) and I'm an atheistic critical thinker. Do I need to elaborate further why that undermines your claim of being skeptical yourself?

Furthermore, it appears that you've dismissed the implications of the Libet and related experiments without rebuttal. A skeptical critical thinker doesn't do that.

Yes, I do, but it seems that you didn't understand what I wrote. You didn't address any of it beyond dismissing it out of hand. You made no attempt to rebut it, so there is no evidence that you read and understood it.

Here it appears that you didn't understand the concept of the illusion of free will and the intractable problem of demonstrating that one could have made another choice. All you have here is what it feels like to you.

Nope. Free will is assumed, but its existence or nonexistence is irrelevant to the scientific method.

Disagree again. Knowledge is the collection of demonstrably correct ideas.

The actual claims are that free will and gods MIGHT NOT exist. And what you find credible is of no interest to the critical thinking empiricist without a compelling argument that indicates that the incredulity is justified.

You seem to be content believing your intuitions. If it seems like free will to you, then it is. If it seems like a god exists to you, then you conclude one does. But there is another way to think, to decide what is true about the world and how it works, one that identifies the ideas that should not be believed. Intuitions, hunches, gut feelings, and comforting ideas aren't among the ideas fit to be believed or considered knowledge.

What are your thoughts on my comments about Abrahamic religion requiring that free will be a thing, and that this is what motivates such people to argue for its existence? The rest only say that their will feels free, but don't fight the idea that it might not be even if they can't wrap their heads around the real possibility that free will is an illusion. It's the Abrahamist who makes the argument that a deity can have omniscience and that free will can coexist with that omniscience.

The unbelievers see how that is an incoherent argument - internally self-contradicting - and don't make it, probably because they have no stake in free will being a thing. They just feel like it is a thing because the illusion of free will is seductive, but feel no need to make arguments that free will and omniscient deities aren't mutually exclusive concepts.

Any comment there, or do you agree? The loss of free will is as destructive to Christian theology as the loss of the de novo creation of Adam and Eve one day. How can you have a religion which a just god punishes mankind because of the fall of man following the free will choice of the first two people if there were no first two people and there is no free will?
This seems to be rambling and I don’t think I can address any of it meaningfully if we have this miscommunication.

I am an atheist. Not just some person who lacks belief in a god, but one who believes no god exists.

I am sorry you feel I do not understand what you wrote.

Perhaps we should explore the scientific process so we can discern where free will is or is not assumed throughout.

Both causality and free-will are assumed in our scientific thought process. Neither can be proven.
 

muhammad_isa

Veteran Member
If my choice is known before I make it, it was never a free choice..
..and yet you can't explain why .. you just "know" that it must be so.

I can explain why I believe what I believe.

"An agent is free to do otherwise, if it can do otherwise if it WANTS to do otherwise"

The mistake you are making, is that you assume that a person cannot do otherwise, as there is a pre-ordained script.
..but this isn't the case.
G-d simply knows what you will WANT to choose. If you had WANTED to choose otherwise, then G-d
would have know it.

The bottom line, is that you choose what you WANT to choose .. it is no illusion!
The illusion, is that foreknowledge somehow magically interferes with your choice .. but
there is no such mechanism. It is a case of intuition being incorrect in this case.

What you need to ask yourself, is HOW does G-d know what you want to choose.
The answer lies in G-d not being part of the universe .. outside of time-space.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
..and yet you can't explain why .. you just "know" that it must be so.

???

It is so by definition.
If my choice is free, then what choice I make is only known with certainty once I make it.
If it is known with certainty before hand, then it's predetermined. And hence not free.

No clue what you don't get about that.

I can explain why I believe what I believe.

"An agent is free to do otherwise, if it can do otherwise if it WANTS to do otherwise"

The mistake you are making, is that you assume that a person cannot do otherwise, as there is a pre-ordained script.

I said nothing of the sort.
I merely said that if a choice is known before hand with certainty, it was never a free choice.
Be it through a script, deterministic laws, mind-control,... whatever.

..but this isn't the case.
G-d simply knows what you will WANT to choose. If you had WANTED to choose otherwise, then G-d
would have know it.

A free choice means I am also free to choose something I don't actually want.
You make no sense.

Again: a free choice can only be known with certainty once it is made. Not before hand. That is a contradiction in terms.

The bottom line, is that you choose what you WANT to choose .. it is no illusion!

And if it is known before hand what I will "want" then what I want is pre-determined and it couldn't be any other way.
Hence: not free.

The illusion, is that foreknowledge somehow magically interferes with your choice .. but
there is no such mechanism. It is a case of intuition being incorrect in this case.

That isn't an illusion. Perfect foreknowledge is fundamentally incompatible with actual free will.

What you need to ask yourself, is HOW does G-d know what you want to choose.

Don't know, don't care. It doesn't matter. You keep missing the point.

The answer lies in G-d not being part of the universe .. outside of time-space.
That again doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. In fact, it makes it worse.

It turns space-time into a movie that you can fast forward to see the end and then rewind.
There is no free will in the movies. It will play out in the exact same way every time you watch it.
If there is true free will in the universe, that would mean that you could "rewind" time and have it play out differently in the next run, since actors would be free to make different choices.

Incidently that is what evolution tells us also. There is random mutation (with respect to fitness).
So if we could push the "reset" button and turn back time to the origins of life... then humans would not evolve again.
 
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