Does Free Will Exist?

[Trailblazer]

“Regardless of the thought process involved people are responsible for their moral choices.”

So society has decided. .

And so you really think that people are not responsible for their moral choices?
So who is responsible? Someone has to be responsible.

“They could have concluded otherwise than to rape or murder someone if they had morals.”

If a moral component was part of the chain of cause-effect that led up to the "concluding event."

A moral component would not lead to murder.

“Morals come from religion. Without religion, humanity is lost.”

I disagree. From what I've seen empathy can be substantial basis of morality. .

That is true, but I was talking about humanity as a whole. We cannot count on empathy to instill morality because most people do not have empathy if it comes to deciding between their own wants and needs and caring about someone else.

“The human will is the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.”

And I would say the will is the capacity to act decisively on one's desires. .

But a person does not have to act upon their own personal desires; they can act according to their principles, what they believe is the right thing to do. Animals act on their desires. Humans have the capacity to rise above their desires.

“Clearly we have a will because if we had no will we would not be able to do anything at all.”

Why not? .

The will is the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.
If we did not will anything how could we do anything?

By the by, how about addressing my previous question.

You: Free will is circumscribed by many factors.
Me: Curious: what exculpatory factors might these be? .

Childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances.

 

[Koldo]

No what I want the most I am denying myself. I am choosing the path that I don't want.

Why are you this choosing this path ? Because you want to be happier. Therefore you are not really choosing the path you don't want. That's merely the perception you have for resisting a major urge.

 

[Trailblazer]

I think that this is spot on.

Some illusions are very strong. Take horizons as an example. We can see them, talk about them, make pictures of them, etc. But they don't objectively exist. They are an illusion created by our limited power of perception.

Similarly, free will is an illusion created by our limited ability to perceive the causes of our choices. But those causes do exist, and are beyond our control. So our will isn't really free.
Tom

I fully disagree with that.
With self-awareness, we can know the causes of our choices. We cannot know all of the causes, because much of our thought is subconscious, but we can know some of the causes if we are self-aware.

Our free will is constrained but we are still free to make choices.
The illusion that we are not free to make choices is a very dangerous proposition.

Free will: If you believe in free will, you believe that people have a choice in what they do and that their actions have not been decided in advance by God or by any other power. Free will definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

A really important point is that if someone believes that they have free will they will think they have a choice BEFORE they act, but if someone does not believe they have free will they will never think they have a choice, they will just act impulsively. The awareness that we have a choice is what enables us to make a choice instead of just acting according to the first thought or emotion that comes to mind.

I ride my bike to work and back three hours a day so I see it all the time, people who run red lights. They probably did not think they had a choice, they just acted on emotion. It is so sad and so dangerous.

 

[Enoch07]

Why are you this choosing this path ?

I have already stated why. Because I refuse to give back control of my life to drugs and alchohol.

Because you want to be happier.

Forcing myself to die slowly and painfuly will not make me happy. I do not look forward to it, at all.

Therefore you are not really choosing the path you don't want.

I am unfortunately choosing the path I don't want.

That's merely the perception you have for resisting a major urge.

No, it's the grim reality of resisting that major urge.

I'll try to frame it better.

Earlier you asked me:

What do you want to achieve ?

I replied:

I want to be happy just like everyone else

The you replied:

And you think that by taking this stand of yours you are gonna be happier ?

And I replied:

We shall see.

As in we shall see because I don't know it will make me happier. But I am chosing it anyways.

But then you respond with:

Because you want to be happier.

If I chose the option I knew would make me happier it would be the drugs and hooker option.

Which I have not taken that option.

Not a drop of alchohol since New Years, no drugs in 3 years (had a minor relapse and smoked 1 joint with a friend, but before that clean for almost 20 years).

So you see I want to be happy. Drugs/alchohol will make me happy.

But I am chosing the other option, unfortunately for me.

 

[Trailblazer]

You have said: "My will can override what I WANT". In my perspective, your will is your want. They are not separated. I will try to explain what I mean.

Whenever I think of the reason as to why I chose to do something the word 'want' is always present.

In essence this means there is an hierarchy between your 'wants', and since choices come in packages, we end up choosing the package that suits what we want the most.

This leads to the point that if I knew the exact hierarchy between your 'wants' at any given moment I could know exactly how you would choose if asked any given choice. This is what leads some people to say there is no free will.

I agree with what you said about wants but fact that we will always do what we want the most does not mean there was no choice made, thus it does not negate free will. A hierarchy of wants means there is more than one want to choose from.

The video said:
What makes free will an illusion is that the choice you make will always be either the choice to do what you most want to do (even when it overrides your wanting to do something else) or the choice you don't want to make but are forced to make.

The fact that we always DO what we MOST WANT to do does not mean that we did not have a choice not to do it. This is sheer idiocy.

For example, if I most wanted to go and have sex with a man I am not married to and I did that, that does not mean I did not have a choice. I should pay the price because I made the choice.

I most wanted to grab some tortilla chips and I just ate way too many. I could have chosen not to get those tortilla chips. I will pay the price because I made the choice.

If a man most wants the insurance money and he kills his wife he made a choice to kill his wife for the insurance money. He should pay the price because he made the choice.

 

[blü 2]

I do not agree with him that we do not have free will.

Our video presenter defines 'freewill' as the ability to have acted differently.

Next he says he won't discuss the neurological case against freewill. But in fact his argument is essentially neurological, since it distinguishes between what the conscious processes of the brain can do, and what they can't do, about the non-conscious processes of the same brain.

And he says, I think correctly, that the nonconscious ones do all the work while the conscious ones wait to be informed what they've decided ─ a proposition well supported by experiments, which show that the conscious brain often doesn't know till several seconds after the event what the nonconscious brain is going to do.

However, if you think of 'you' as including the totality of your brain functions, and not just the conscious ones, then 'you' are the one nonconsciously doing the decision-making, the brain processes involved being in many cases quite well understood.

That doesn't alter my basic view ─ all our decisions, all our decision-making processes, are the result of complex and interacting chains of cause+effect (possibly with random interruptions from quantum randomness, though I'm not aware this has been demonstrated).

 

[Trailblazer]

It makes no statement beyond itself so it's just narrcisism. I believe x to be true therefore x is true because I believe it to be true. It's circular reasoning dressed up to make believe it's saying something.

That is what it is, I could not have said it better..... I love it, I just love it.
This just reminded me of why I like RF so much...

 

[Trailblazer]

Situations create needed actions, like the need to eat but we have the ability to say no and refrain from eating. Not only is this the case for us but all life has the same ability to some extent.

How true. The situation of this thread and all the posts I have to get through caused me to go get too many tortilla chips and eat them.... I do not normally act like this but I hate getting behind on posts.
Even my cat knows better than to hog all the food when other cats need it...

 

[Koldo]

I have already stated why. Because I refuse to give back control of my life to drugs and alchohol.



Forcing myself to die slowly and painfuly will not make me happy. I do not look forward to it, at all.



I am unfortunately choosing the path I don't want.



No, it's the grim reality of resisting that major urge.

I'll try to frame it better.

Earlier you asked me:



I replied:



The you replied:



And I replied:



As in we shall see because I don't know it will make me happier. But I am chosing it anyways.

But then you respond with:



If I chose the option I knew would make me happier it would be the drugs and hooker option.

Which I have not taken that option.

Not a drop of alchohol since New Years, no drugs in 3 years (had a minor relapse and smoked 1 joint with a friend, but before that clean for almost 20 years).

So you see I want to be happy. Drugs/alchohol will make me happy.

But I am chosing the other option, unfortunately for me.

Let me take a step back then:

Why do you refuse to give back control of your life to drugs and alchohol ?

Imagine I will keep asking 'why?' as a reply to your answer until no further 'why?' can be asked then tell me what you come up with as your answer.

 

[Koldo]

I agree with what you said about wants but fact that we will always do what we want the most does not mean there was no choice made, thus it does not negate free will. A hierarchy of wants means there is more than one want to choose from.

The video said:
What makes free will an illusion is that the choice you make will always be either the choice to do what you most want to do (even when it overrides your wanting to do something else) or the choice you don't want to make but are forced to make.

The fact that we always DO what we MOST WANT to do does not mean that we did not have a choice not to do it. This is sheer idiocy.

For example, if I most wanted to go and have sex with a man I am not married to and I did that, that does not mean I did not have a choice. I should pay the price because I made the choice.

I most wanted to grab some tortilla chips and I just ate way too many. I could have chosen not to get those tortilla chips. I will pay the price because I made the choice.

If a man most wants the insurance money and he kills his wife he made a choice to kill his wife for the insurance money. He should pay the price because he made the choice.

It depends on what you call by choice. I agree that we do make a choice by the way. But for many people it is not a legitimate choice if you can't escape from, for instance, doing what you want to do the most.

 

[Enoch07]

Why do you refuse to give back control of your life to drugs and alchohol ?

Imagine I will keep asking 'why?' as a reply to your answer until no further 'why?' can be asked then tell me what you come up with as your answer.

I have already answered that multiple times. Apparently you are choosing to willfully ignore it and repeat your circular logic because you won't accept my answer.

This conversation can go no further so long as you ignore the answer given.

 

[Trailblazer]

I don't want to live peacefully. I want to raise hell and not go quietly into that night. But because this is how I lived the first half of my life. I now refuse to give in to drug and alchohol addiction for the rest of my life. I am taking a principled stand against my own wants. I am exercising my free will.

Good for you. I led a life like that too for many decades. It was not alcohol and drugs but addictions are addictions.
I now exercise my free will and try to practice my religion and get close to God.

 

[Trailblazer]

It depends on what you call by choice. I agree that we do make a choice by the way. But for many people it is not a legitimate choice if you can't escape from, for instance, doing what you want to do the most.

Whether or not what you want most is a legitimate choice would depend upon what it is.

 

[Koldo]

I have already answered that multiple times. Apparently you are choosing to willfully ignore it and repeat your circular logic because you won't accept my answer.

This conversation can go no further so long as you ignore the answer given.

It is not that I am ignoring it. It is just that we haven't gotten to the bottom of it. It is what it is.

You have told me you are acting out of principle, but you haven't explained why you are doing so. I thought it was because it made you happier, your post made me think so but you said that is not the case.
You are stuck at this point because of that. This is the reason as to why I told you to imagine me keeping asking you 'why?' until it was no longer possible.

 

[Koldo]

Whether or not what you want most is a legitimate choice would depend upon what it is.

By legitimate choice I meant one that would satisfy the requirements to count as a choice done with free will. There is divergence on the exact meaning of free will.

 

[Trailblazer]

As long as I have an awareness of how I can influence my wants I then have the ability to influence what wants I choose.

Yes, it is all about self-awareness.
Glad to see I found an atheist who has some insight and common sense.

This whole idea that we have no choice but to do what we want at the time is childishly naive and irresponsible.
This atheist on the other forum claims a murderer is not responsible for his choice because he has no free will.

He thinks that if god exists and is all-wise and all-powerful, god could prevent evil by allowing no circumstances to exist that would tempt or allow anyone to do evil. This is his solution to evil.

 

[Enoch07]

It is not that I am ignoring it. It is just that we haven't gotten to the bottom of it. It is what it is.

We have as far as I am concerned. You may disagree, but I can't go any further until you get past the why.

You have told me you are acting out of principle, but you haven't explained why you are doing so. I

I have multiple times.

. I thought it was because it made you happier, your post made me think so but you said that is not the case.

That's your confusion.

I cleared that up in post #145.

You are stuck at this point because of that.

No, we are stuck because you can't get past why, because you won't accept the answer as to why.

imagine me keeping asking you 'why?' until it was no longer possible.

We've been at that point for awhile unfortunately.

 

[Trailblazer]

By legitimate choice I meant one that would satisfy the requirements to count as a choice done with free will. There is divergence on the exact meaning of free will.

Okay, thanks for clarifying that.
There certainly is a divergence.

 

[charlie sc]

At first in my youth it was trial and error.

As a child?

Then i came to realize that just was not working.

So, you adapted your standards to what worked and what didn't. And that was dependant on?

I took those meanings to heart and i would never go back.

Seems like you couldn't go back even if you wanted to choose to

I find it humorous how people think they are the absolute ruler of their will. When, in fact, psychology and psycho-analyses demonstrably shows how we're all prone to the same cognition and desires. I personally know people who say they're in control of their emotions and will, however, under close examination, they're not even close. The people who claim control are probably the most influenced by their desires. They just don't realise it.

 

[charlie sc]

I now refuse to give in to drug and alchohol addiction for the rest of my life.

Why did you give into drugs in the first place? Did you not know about the side effects?

I am unfortunately choosing the path I don't want.

Why are you choosing a path you don't want to do?