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Do you Think we have Free Will

Do you Think we have Free Will


  • Total voters
    59

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Is it possible that all we experience is just an illusion of free will? Sure. But such an incredible claim would surely require incredible evidence.
I don't consider the claim incredible if written "It might be the case that free will is an illusion."

Furthermore, the only evidence we have suggest that what we will is not chosen, but generated in neural circuits outside of consciousness and then delivered to the self as well as the illusion that that will was generated by the self rather than received by it. But this would be something the likes of which we have never encountered in reality - the self generating thoughts. The brain does that. How could the subject who observes the conscious content generate anything de novo?

Also, what would be evidence that will is freely chosen and acted upon by the self rather than received by it?
I am granting your previous comment , free will can´t be tested, all we have is a personal experience where it really feels as though sometimes we make free choices. I personally would argue that this “experience” is enough to grant that we have free will
What you've described is both what free will and the illusion of free will would feel like. We might be able to show that the latter is the case with brain-body studies as has been alluded to in this thread, but not that what you believe - that will is determined by rather than delivered to the self - is actually correct. All you have is an intuition, a hunch, and no way to confirm it. Even with a time machine, you couldn't confirm that you could have chosen differently at any given instant in time.

Think about that. You wouldn't know that you had already gone through that moment, made a choice, or what that choice was to realize that you had done this before or to decide if it was a different choice last time, because if you did know that, it wouldn't be the same you.
I am not willing to pay the price of rejecting free will, unless a strong argument is given
There is no price to pay. That's my working hypothesis - that I am just a hitchhiker in this body, watching the brain assemble conscious phenomena, which include desires, making me the "robot" many theists describe that state as being. I'm perfectly good with that possibility.

Sometimes I receive one desire, such as the desire to drink some water, and I simply act on it. Sometimes, I receive conflicting desires, such as the desire to drink combined with the knowledge that I can't because of surgery in the morning, and watch one hold sway over the alternatives. I saw that when quitting cigarettes. Lower centers craved cigarettes and willed that I smoke one. Higher centers admonished me to resist. The latter prevailed most of the time, but there were times when the tug of war was won by the urge.

If I had had free will, it wouldn't have been like that. There would have been no backsliding.

It really is more like I'm an outsider watching this brain and body do its thing, but it's difficult to see that, because the illusion of free will is compelling, and thought of not having it is disconcerting initially. But why fight it? if that's how it is, then that's how it's always been, and if life was fine before when I thought I had free will, it's still fine, since nothing has changed apart from my enlightenment.

An interesting twist on this is Libet's concept of "free won't," referring to higher cortical centers being able to suppress lower ones as with the example of smoking cessation. But this idea just makes the higher cortical circuits the self, as if it alone were me and other urges arising at lower levels were not. The argument there is the same: those ideas come from the brain and are delivered to the mind just as deterministically as the urges it inhibits:
There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit.
 

danieldemol

Veteran Member
Premium Member
..but that is just a cop-out..

I could see a pretty woman, and think "I would like to seduce her", but my sense of decency
tells me that it is wrong to do so, so make the conscious decision NOT to.

No one but 'me' has made that decision. Naturally, 'me' has evolved, or learned through life,
to be who I am .. 'nature' is but one aspect of that.
It is nurture you are referring to here, but nurture is an environmental accident (ie a part of nature) in my view.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
..so your life is just an "accident" from beginning to end? How sad!
How sad to be in a position where you believe a life is worse without a god belief informing it. One of the rewards of atheism is the acceptance of ideas such as that consciousness might be permanently extinguished with death, that there may be no purpose to life other than that purpose one makes or discovers for it, that much or most of life proceeds by its own design, and that we each decide what is right and wrong ourselves. On another thread, they're discussing free will, which might not exist except as an illusion. These things are all OK with me, and like @danieldemol, I can say to you that I live a full and satisfying life without gods and religions. If that weren't the case, I'd be in a religion looking for the meaning I've found without it.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
How sad to be in a position where you believe a life is worse without a god belief informing it. One of the rewards of atheism is the acceptance of ideas such as that consciousness might be permanently extinguished with death, that there may be no purpose to life other than that purpose one makes or discovers for it, that much or most of life proceeds by its own design, and that we each decide what is right and wrong ourselves. On another thread, they're discussing free will, which might not exist except as an illusion. These things are all OK with me, and like @danieldemol, I can say to you that I live a full and satisfying life without gods and religions. If that weren't the case, I'd be in a religion looking for the meaning I've found without it.


Then why aren’t you off living that full and satisfying life without god or religion, instead of writing protracted essays about how unimportant religion is to you, on a religious forum?
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
Then why aren’t you off living that full and satisfying life without god or religion, instead of writing protracted essays about how unimportant religion is to you, on a religious forum?

Obviously because writting protracted essays (is it even accurate to label it this way though?) on a religious forum is part of his full and satisfying life without God or a religion.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Then why aren’t you off living that full and satisfying life without god or religion, instead of writing protracted essays about how unimportant religion is to you, on a religious forum?
That seems to agitate you. I consider making the case against organized religion both a civic duty and a pleasant pastime. I don't ask you to understand or approve.

And yes, my life is sufficient for me. I have what I want. My life is simple, easy, uncluttered, and unencumbered. I have love, beauty, and leisure. Thanks for asking. I hope that you can say the same.
it's this one!
So it is.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
I disagree wíth your conclusion. And please don't make an appeal to consequences.
The conclusions are necesary true, and why shouldn't I appeal to
Consequences * given that my argument is grounded on the absurdity of these Consequences?

* Consequences, if there is no free will there is no morality nor reazon nor critical thinking etc.

Let me try a step by step approach since explaining it fully all at once didn't work: Why did you choose not to spend more than 1 usd a day in chocolates?

Whatever reason/goal you give me, I am going to keep asking: Why did you choose this reason/goal... ? And we will either keep going forever (infinite regress) or you will eventually tell me you didn't choose that reason/goal. (Or that you had no reason in particular thus making your choice entirely arbitrary, which also excludes free will)
Sure
So I freely descided to buy X rather than Y because X is only 1usd... and I freely descided that I wont spend more than 1 usd in chocolates, because I freely descided to make and respect a budget etc....

Even if we go back to infinity , that doesn't mean that there wasent a free component on each step. (Or atleast in some of the steps)

In other words, eventhough I bought X I could have bought Y (I had the hability to buy Y) therefore my choice was free.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Then why aren’t you off living that full and satisfying life without god or religion, instead of writing protracted essays about how unimportant religion is to you, on a religious forum?
Religious forum ?....sometimes it feels like an atheist forum .
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
I haven’t proved empirically that I have ever eaten chicken.. (I assume it´s possible, with DNA testing for example) but I havent done it.

However I simply trust the labels of the supermarket , because I “feel” that it is unlikely that they would lie to me so many times


I dont hold the view that empirical testing is the only way to “know things”…….. so the lack of empirical testing to confirm free will or chicken is not a concern for me
Why does this feel like the cat is out of the bag now?

Was this entire thread nothing but a means to an end? That end being to try and "trick" people into saying that "personal experience" is enough "evidence" to claim knowledge and therefor it should be enough to claim that god exists?

I had a feeling from the beginning that this was what this was all about.
It's also why I hammered on exposing your false dichotomy earlier on.

Which is also quite interesting, because you granted my point and 2 posts later when somebody else made the same comment about the false dichotomy, you again challenged that comment eventhough you JUST granted the point that it was a false dichotomy.

Interesting indeed.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
I don't consider the claim incredible if written "It might be the case that free will is an illusion."

Furthermore, the only evidence we have suggest that what we will is not chosen, but generated in neural circuits outside of consciousness and then delivered to the self as well as the illusion that that will was generated by the self rather than received by it. But this would be something the likes of which we have never encountered in reality - the self generating thoughts. The brain does that. How could the subject who observes the conscious content generate anything de novo?

Also, what would be evidence that will is freely chosen and acted upon by the self rather than received by it?

What you've described is both what free will and the illusion of free will would feel like. We might be able to show that the latter is the case with brain-body studies as has been alluded to in this thread, but not that what you believe - that will is determined by rather than delivered to the self - is actually correct. All you have is an intuition, a hunch, and no way to confirm it. Even with a time machine, you couldn't confirm that you could have chosen differently at any given instant in time.

Think about that. You wouldn't know that you had already gone through that moment, made a choice, or what that choice was to realize that you had done this before or to decide if it was a different choice last time, because if you did know that, it wouldn't be the same you.

There is no price to pay. That's my working hypothesis - that I am just a hitchhiker in this body, watching the brain assemble conscious phenomena, which include desires, making me the "robot" many theists describe that state as being. I'm perfectly good with that possibility.

Sometimes I receive one desire, such as the desire to drink some water, and I simply act on it. Sometimes, I receive conflicting desires, such as the desire to drink combined with the knowledge that I can't because of surgery in the morning, and watch one hold sway over the alternatives. I saw that when quitting cigarettes. Lower centers craved cigarettes and willed that I smoke one. Higher centers admonished me to resist. The latter prevailed most of the time, but there were times when the tug of war was won by the urge.

If I had had free will, it wouldn't have been like that. There would have been no backsliding.

It really is more like I'm an outsider watching this brain and body do its thing, but it's difficult to see that, because the illusion of free will is compelling, and thought of not having it is disconcerting initially. But why fight it? if that's how it is, then that's how it's always been, and if life was fine before when I thought I had free will, it's still fine, since nothing has changed apart from my enlightenment.

An interesting twist on this is Libet's concept of "free won't," referring to higher cortical centers being able to suppress lower ones as with the example of smoking cessation. But this idea just makes the higher cortical circuits the self, as if it alone were me and other urges arising at lower levels were not. The argument there is the same: those ideas come from the brain and are delivered to the mind just as deterministically as the urges it inhibits:
There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit.

All you have is an intuition, a hunch, and no way to confirm it. Even with a time machine, you couldn't confirm that you could have chosen differently at any given instant in time.

Granted, the good news is that I consider intution as a good source of knowledge and my World view is not restricted to...... "only things that can be confirmed emirically"

...

If there is no free will, then you are just a robot preprogramed to think that this universe is 13B+ Years old..... and YECs are just robots preprogramed to think that the universe is 6,000yo .. you have no objective way to tell who is correct. ...... AS I said I am not willing to pay the price of rejecting free will unless conclusive evidence is provided..
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
What you describe is NOT really a "reflex" action .. that is an involuntary action,
such as a tendon reflex (or jerk).

What you describe is more akin to the way the brain deals with multi-tasking.
It still requires a choice to be made, and it is consciously made.

Sorry, I disagree.
When I'm driving and somebody suddenly cuts me off, I by no means make a conscious decision to do whatever I do to avoid a collision... be it steering, breaking, whatever.

The action I end up taking most certainly is informed by my experience driving cars. Someone who just got his license yesterday is going to have a different reaction then someone who's been driving hours a day for 20 years. But that split second in which I react, I by no means am consciously analysing the situation and consciously choosing to react in the way that I do.

Instead, it just happens. Like when I jump up when a sudden loud bang happens close to me, or blinking when something suddenly launches to my face. There's no thinking. There's no conscious decision making. There's just an instinctive reaction that occurs. I would call that a reflex.


Consider dodging when somebody tries to hit you with a basebal bat.
Everyone will try *something* instinctively to try and avoid being hurt.
Now consider someone with zero fighting experience vs someone who's been practicing martial arts for 20 years.
They will have very different reactions. And neither will be thinking about it. You don't have time to think. If you do, the bat will hit your face before you respond.

The only difference is that the martial artist's mind will be much more conditioned and that person's instinctive reaction will be a lot more succesfull then the inexperienced fighter.
But there will not be a conscious "choice". There will just be a reflex to try and avoid harm after your brain's alarm goes off saying "DANGER DANGER"

i.e. a person who presses the brake while driving, has MADE A CHOICE.
If that were not the case, then cars would be stopping without the drivers wishing it. :)
Not a conscious choice, is the point.

When a loud bang occurs, you could also say that you "choose" to jump up.
But to say it's a choice like when choosing chicking over beef at a restaurant.... surely you can see how these aren't comparable.

In such situations, like when in traffic, I do first and think afterwards.
If I think first, I'll hit the car by the time I made a conscious choice.
 
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leroy

Well-Known Member
Why does this feel like the cat is out of the bag now?

Was this entire thread nothing but a means to an end? That end being to try and "trick" people into saying that "personal experience" is enough "evidence" to claim knowledge and therefor it should be enough to claim that god exists?

I had a feeling from the beginning that this was what this was all about.
It's also why I hammered on exposing your false dichotomy earlier on.

Which is also quite interesting, because you granted my point and 2 posts later when somebody else made the same comment about the false dichotomy, you again challenged that comment eventhough you JUST granted the point that it was a false dichotomy.

Interesting indeed.
Yes you got me.


Atheist who accepted free will are tacitly admitting that experience is a good source of knowledge,....... (therefore you cant dismiss religious experience as evidence for god without an argument)

Atheist who rejected free will, are tacitly admitting that there is no morality, no objective truths, no critical thinking etc.... you cant even say that Ken Ham is a lier because to lie requires free will.

So in ether case, I would have good weapons in future conversations with atheist.



Which is also quite interesting, because you granted my point and 2 posts later when somebody else made the same comment about the false dichotomy, you again challenged that comment eventhough you JUST granted the point that it was a false dichotomy.

After you corrected me, I haven't presented that as a dichotomy, I challege you to show otherwise

Sure I agree that stricktly speacking there are more that 2 alternatives, (therefore not a dichotomy) but none if the other alternatives seem to help anyway.
 

Koldo

Outstanding Member
The conclusions are necesary true, and why shouldn't I appeal to
Consequences * given that my argument is grounded on the absurdity of these Consequences?

* Consequences, if there is no free will there is no morality nor reazon nor critical thinking etc.

Once again, this is better left to another topic. Suffices to say that I disagree that those are indeed consequences for now.

Sure
So I freely descided to buy X rather than Y because X is only 1usd... and I freely descided that I wont spend more than 1 usd in chocolates, because I freely descided to make and respect a budget etc....

Even if we go back to infinity , that doesn't mean that there wasent a free component on each step. (Or atleast in some of the steps)

In other words, eventhough I bought X I could have bought Y (I had the hability to buy Y) therefore my choice was free.

If you decided to buy X rather than Y because X is only 1 USD then your choice wasn't free. If your choice has a reason it is not free because your choice is then an inevitability given the existence of that reason.

What you are telling me when you explain the reason behind your choice is: I chose X rather Y because Z condition was present. This means that Z condition lead to X. Else, Z condition would not explain why I chose X.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Yes you got me.


Atheist who accepted free will are tacitly admitting that experience is a good source of knowledge,....... (therefore you cant dismiss religious experience as evidence for god without an argument)

Atheist who rejected free will, are tacitly admitting that there is no morality, no objective truths, no critical thinking etc.... you cant even say that Ken Ham is a lier because to lie requires free will.

So in ether case, I would have good weapons in future conversations with atheist.

Sounds like you failed miserably in your dishonest trickery though, as you could find no atheist who would agree to your false dichotomy claims here.

After you corrected me, I haven't presented that as a dichotomy, I challege you to show otherwise

Post #76: Do you Think we have Free Will
You grant the point that it's a false dichotomy and grant that there are other alternatives.

Post #78 (so AFTER you granted the point): Do you Think we have Free Will
@9-10ths_Penguin points out the exact same false dichotomy

Post #80: Do you Think we have Free Will
You reply to @9-10ths_Penguin by asking what other alternatives there are, as if you don't know of any


This all happened even on the same page, within 4 posts.
This behavior is why people are annoyed by your posts. It's like you have the memory span of a goldfish.

Sure I agree that stricktly speacking there are more that 2 alternatives, (therefore not a dichotomy) but none if the other alternatives seem to help anyway.
Well, they don't help your hidden agenda in this thread, that's for sure.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The conclusions are necesary true, and why shouldn't I appeal to
Consequences * given that my argument is grounded on the absurdity of these Consequences?
I think what he meant was to not make the argument that something must be true or untrue because we prefer it to be true:

What Is the Appeal to Consequences?​

Appeal to consequences is a fallacy in which someone concludes that a statement, belief, or hypothesis must be true (or false) simply because it would lead to desirable (or undesirable) consequences if it were so.

It has two logical forms, a positive and a negative one. The positive form goes:
  • If X is true, then Y will happen.
  • Y is desirable.
  • Therefore, X is true.
And the negative one:
  • If X is true, then Y will happen.
  • Y is undesirable.
  • Therefore, X is false.
*********

Perhaps you're thinking of one of these:
  • In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
  • In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or the validity of a proposition, by showing that assuming the proposition to be false leads to a contradiction.
* Consequences, if there is no free will there is no morality nor reazon nor critical thinking etc.
How does that follow? I operate under the assumption that there probably is no such thing as free will, ad that if there were not, the world might look exactly as it does - automatons blissfully ignorant that their desires are generated for them and delivered to them from neural circuits outside of the mind they generate. And intellectual and moral excellence remain goals. I have a conscience that tells me what is right and wrong, and I obey it at the peril of dysphorias like guilt and shame when I don't, so I have a motivation to mind it. And I also have a desire to accumulate only correct ideas, as well as a method that does that. Free will is not needed for any of that to transpire.
So I freely descided to buy X rather than Y because X is only 1usd... and I freely descided that I wont spend more than 1 usd in chocolates, because I freely descided to make and respect a budget etc.
But you didn't freely decide anything. You received instructions that you thought you created from nothing yourself within the theater of your conscious experience and executed them cheerfully and willingly without impediment or internal conflict - the illusion of free will.
I consider intution as a good source of knowledge
It's not. It's a good source of new ideas to consider and of creative ideas, but not for correct ideas about reality and how it behaves. For that, only empiricism will do. And if your definition of knowledge isn't limited to demonstrably correct ideas, then you're referring to hunches as knowledge.
my World view is not restricted to...... "only things that can be confirmed emirically"
Yes, I know. Mine is.
If there is no free will, then you are just a robot preprogramed to think that this universe is 13B+ Years old..... and YECs are just robots preprogramed to think that the universe is 6,000yo
OK. I'm good with that possibility. Maybe that's how it is. If so, it's how it's always been and how the world works.
you have no objective way to tell who is correct.
Disagree. You seem to think that absent free will, other mental functions must be absent as well, such as reason and empirical inquiry.
AS I said I am not willing to pay the price of rejecting free will unless conclusive evidence is provided..
There is no price for me to accept the possibility that free will is only illusion as I explained and demonstrated previously, but there is one for the Abrahamist, whose worldview is based in a god that damns souls for their choices and who saves others for theirs because of man's sinful nature resulting from an alleged act of disobedience by the first two people in a garden long ago necessitating a freely made act of sacrifice to mitigate. That all falls apart if one removes free will from his worldview.

This might be what the other poster was implying when he asked you to not make a consequences fallacy. Rejecting the possibility of free will because you don't like the consequences of that for your theology is such a fallacy.
Atheist who accepted free will are tacitly admitting that experience is a good source of knowledge
To me, they're tacitly admitting that if free will is an illusion, they have been fooled, that they're uncritically accepting the truth of an irresistible intuition, and have misunderstood their experience. It's a common mistake people make - mistaking the output of their own brains for received messages. That's why we had the Muses before there was a concept of human creativity and invention. That's why we have Abrahamists speaking in terms of a battle being waged in their minds by demons and angels. That's why we have people trying to interpret dreams as messages from without rather than the products of their own brains. And that's why we have people who have spiritual experiences understanding that as sensing a god.
 

muhammad_isa

Veteran Member
Sorry, I disagree.
When I'm driving and somebody suddenly cuts me off, I by no means make a conscious decision to do whatever I do to avoid a collision... be it steering, breaking, whatever.
You are just trying to fool us all with a special case.
You imply that you can be asleep at the wheel and still safely drive. :)

Not a conscious choice, is the point.
Well, I hope I never meet you on the road, if you are not consciously concentrating!

If I think first, I'll hit the car by the time I made a conscious choice.
Oh .. so there is such a thing as conscious choice, then?
..or is that just "an illusion" as well? :rolleyes:
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
You are just trying to fool us all with a special case.

??

How is that case "special"?

You imply that you can be asleep at the wheel and still safely drive. :)

Not even close.

Well, I hope I never meet you on the road, if you are not consciously concentrating!

I think you are being obtuse.
I'm not talking about a case where you see from a mile away that something is blocking your lane or that the light is red.
Instead, I'm talking about unexpected things on the road where you have to react in a split second and don't have the time to think

Situations where you instinctively react just to avoid harm / a collision.

Oh .. so there is such a thing as conscious choice, then?

Off course.
There are also situations where you do things instinctively.

Have I ever said there wasn't?

..or is that just "an illusion" as well? :rolleyes:
I don't think I ever said such a thing
 
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