Does the non-existence of free will change your beliefs?

[Satyamavejayanti]

You can willingly change. but the change you chose is determined.

But the change that happens is my own willingness to change.

If I did not have freedom to willingly change, the choice of changing or not changing would not be present.

I have a choice, and its always my freedom to choose either willingly or unwillingly.

I do think we are limited in choice, but freedom to choose is our free will.

that is what i think

 

[Skwim]

I unwillingly dont understand what you mean.

To say one has freewill implies that at any point in one's past it was possible to have done differently. I say such a thing is impossible because you did what you did because those influence that led up to what you did where what they where, and not something else. To have been able to do differently these influences would have had to be different, but the fact is, they wern't. Therefore you could only do what they (the influences) led (determined) you to do. You had no actual "choice" in the matter. You had no freewill to do differently.

If I did not have freedom to willingly change my beliefs, the choice of change would not be present.

And it wasn't. Choosing is an illusion.

 

[Willamena]

To say one has freewill implies that at any point in one's past it was possible to have done differently. I say such a thing is impossible because you did what you did because those influence that led up to what you did where what they where, and not something else. To have been able to do differently these influences would have had to be different, but the fact is, they wern't. Therefore you could only do what they (the influences) led (determined) you to do. You had no actual "choice" in the matter. You had no freewill to do differently.

And it wasn't. Choosing is an illusion.

The argument for the ability to "do differently" does not rest on defying influences but on morality. Free will paints a picture of morality that when, having made a choice to do one thing, we could have done another. Having made a choice to kill one's wife's lover, we could have gone another route. It's only because of that picture of free will--that one that gives us morality--that judgement in a court of law is possible.

 

[Satyamavejayanti]

Skwim;3112988]To say one has freewill implies that at any point in one's past it was possible to have done differently. I say such a thing is impossible because you did what you did because those influence that led up to what you did where what they where, and not something else. To have been able to do differently these influences would have had to be different, but the fact is, they wern't. Therefore you could only do what they (the influences) led (determined) you to do. You had no actual "choice" in the matter. You had no freewill to do differently.

Well I agree we are limited by environment in regards to the choices we are presented, but the power to choose, is what i consider free will.
But i do think we dont have a control of the result of the choices we make.
The choice to freely learn from our past is always present, we can either freely choose to learn or be ignorant.

And if it is true that we dont have a choice in any matter of life, everyone would be watching the same movies, going to the same bar ect.
because we dont have a choice hence would not have free will to choose anything different.

And it wasn't. Choosing is an illusion.

I dont think its illusion, its vary much real, everything in life is just choices and opportunities and we have the freedom to choose or reject.

 

[Willamena]

Well I agree we are limited by environment in regards to the choices we are presented, but the power to choose, is what i consider free will.

John Paul Sartre would agree. His vision of the human state was of nothing but choice--complete and utter freedom. "Man" is not an entity independent of nature; "man" is a choice--especially the choice to "be."

His views on freedom flowed from his radical conception of human beings as lacking any kind of positive nature. Instead, we are ‘non-beings’ whose being, moment to moment, is simply to choose:

For human reality, to be is to choose oneself; nothing comes to it either from the outside or from within which it can receive or accept….it is entirely abandoned to the intolerable necessity of making itself be, down to the slightest details. Thus freedom…is the being of man, i.e., his nothingness of being.
​

 

[Me Myself]

But the change that happens is my own willingness to change.

If I did not have freedom to willingly change, the choice of changing or not changing would not be present.

I have a choice, and its always my freedom to choose either willingly or unwillingly.

I do think we are limited in choice, but freedom to choose is our free will.

that is what i think

If you want to call "free will" the choices that you are determined to pick given your reaction to stimuli, by al means do. They are still determined though.

 

[Skwim]

And if it is true that we dont have a choice in any matter of life, everyone would be watching the same movies, going to the same bar ect.

Not at all, because none of us has the exact same background as any other.

 

[Satyamavejayanti]

If you want to call "free will" the choices that you are determined to pick given your reaction to stimuli, by al means do. They are still determined though.

I never said we have absolute free will, but I dont think we have absolutely no free will at all.

Non existence of freewill (as the OP), means to me that every individual has the exact same choices in life and has no freedom for any alternative.
The concepts of Choice itself tells me that we have some degree of freedom in choice and action, hence freedom to willingly or unwillingly choose.

Our reactions to any form of stimuli does determine our choice, i do agree with that, but if we did not have some freedom of will to choose after being presented with a choice then i will consider that lack of free will. Our reactions to stimuli determines the choices we will be presented with but it does not control the Freedom to Choose, that's entirely up to us.

 

[Satyamavejayanti]

Not at all, because none of us has the exact same background as any other.

I think that is because we are Individual free agents with freedom of choice, and are dependent on other free willing agents within the same environment.
While we make our own choices we willingly or unwillingly are influencing the freedom and choices of others, Which would then be the real illusion of not having free will, but in reality is just our interactions and environment that limit the amount of freedom we have.

We dont have absolute free will, but to some degree have freedom to will.

Absolute non existence of free will would to me would mean that there could not even be the concept of choice or freedom in the fist place.

 

[Me Myself]

Our reactions to any form of stimuli does determine our choice, i do agree with that, but if we did not have some freedom of will to choose after being presented with a choice then i will consider that lack of free will. Our reactions to stimuli determines the choices we will be presented with but it does not control the Freedom to Choose, that's entirely up to us.

Yes, it is up to us. What you still don´t seem to understand is that the "us" part is determined.

What are you proposing? what ifs exist? "ifs" are merely intellectual. They work for making projections, but when thinking "what if I had done x", but you did not do x because Y. It´s like saying, what if the tornado had gone right instead of left? well, lets not only think that by future, but by past. If the tornado had gone left, then that would have been because of different currents. If the tornado had different currents, then different events should have happened to make the currents be different.

Everything must change for the tornado to turn left. We have no reason to believe it is different with us. You say that it is different why? because we can imagine it could be? we can imagine a lot of things that doesn´t make them true. We like to think "I could have done differently". Sure. And the tornado could have gone a different direction. Except it didn´t, and it had it´s reasons. Just like you didn´t do differently and you had your reasons.

 

[Me Myself]

I think that is because we are Individual free agents with freedom of choice

o_0 no, that is because we do not have the same backgrounds. If all the things that do not have the same backgrounds are free agents with freedom of choice, then you have no more freedom of choice than a tornado, given that all tornadoes have different backgrounds. All of them.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

If you want to call "free will" the choices that you are determined to pick given your reaction to stimuli, by al means do. They are still determined though.

And this has been demonstrated through various scientific methods across disciplines, such as physics (which is fundamentally indeterministic and at the moment a problematic collection of formalisms which render the very notion of causation an area of contention), neuroscience (in which the basic mechanisms behind information storage, retrieval, and processing are not known, and appear impossible to explain without at the very least quantum-like models), and the life sciences (which is currently going the way of the rest of the physical sciences and adopting models developed within complex systems research).

I mean, it's not as if "Research in biology is often aimed at detangling cause such cause-and-effect chains...However, what we must keep in mind here is that when considering complex phenomena, usually all that can be determined experimentally is whether or not some phenomenon A and some phenomenon B exhibit a correlation...it is quite difficult in studying the kinds of systems considered here to demonstrate cause-effect relations. There are two reasons for this. First, for most processes of interest, there are many causes, and even if for each of these in isolation there may be some clear if A then B causation, because they, in fact, do not act in isolation but in some collective manner, it is quite difficult to consider only one part of the whole and establish a cuase-effect relation involving it...The second problem that we must consider here is that there are cases in which the variables in question cannot be treated as discrete but continuous, and in such cases, it is not possible to describe the system in terms of program-like logical relations." pp. 18-19 (italics in original; emphasis added) from

K. Kaneko's Life: An Introduction to Complex Systems Biology (a volume from Springer's edited monograph series Understanding Complex Systems).

What exactly is the scientific basis, in a world of scientific fields increasingly adopting indeterministic models at the macroscopic level, of applying at best pre-20th century deterministic models to the mind?

 

[Skwim]

Non existence of freewill (as the OP), means to me that every individual has the exact same choices in life and has no freedom for any alternative.
The concepts of Choice itself tells me that we have some degree of freedom in choice and action, hence freedom to willingly or unwillingly choose.

The thing is, there is no actual choosing. You do what you do---pick up a fork--- and not something else---pick up a spoon----because you are caused to do just that. Ask yourself, why the fork and not the spoon? Whatever the reason, which you may not even be aware of, is the cause of the fork picking. In order to pick up the spoon, something leading up to the moment of picking up would have had to be different. But nothing was, so it was inevitable that you picked up the fork.

if we did not have some freedom of will to choose after being presented with a choice then i will consider that lack of free will.

Presented with alternative possibilities, say A or B, could be considered to be choices: however, the act of opting for one over the other is not freely choosing. It is acting in accordance with specific cause/effect events in your life that led up to the moment of acting.

 

[Me Myself]

Human

Machines can simulate human though. The brain is an incredibly advanced computer. It will take us a lot of time to see the patterns behind it´s reasoning. We can´t even figure out the programming yet.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The thing is, there is no actual choosing. You do what you do---pick up a fork--- and not something else---pick up a spoon----is because you are caused to do just that. Ask yourself, why the fork and not the spoon? Whatever the reason, which you may not even be aware of, is the cause of the fork picking. In order to pick up the spoon, something leading up to the moment of picking up would have had to be different. But nothing was, so it was inevitable that you picked up the fork.

Presented with alternative possibilities, say A or B, could be considered to be choices: however, the act of opting for one over the other is not freely choosing. It is acting in accordance with specific cause/effect events in your life that led up to the moment of acting.

How to (mis-)use logic and to ignore science:

1) Reduce reality to first order logic.
2) Adopt a linear view of causation, in which every cause has an effect, and every effect a cause, and there is nothing outside of this discourse universe
3) Describe a situation which seems to conflict with this model by using the reduction from step 1), such as the choice to do A vs. B.
4) Apply the assumptions inherent in your model to the situtation (by, for example, requiring that any choice must be the result of some nebulous, ill-defined series of causes) such that it cannot be falsified.
5) Defend the model against any and all data from the scientific literature by reducing it to your "logical" model of causality, again ensuring that it cannot be falsified.

It's a bit like religion, but hey, all beliefs are based at least in the faith of one's senses.

 

[Me Myself]

You don´t need linearity for determinism. Every effect is caused by every effect previous to it and will cause every effect after it. That is not linear, but it is deterministic.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You don´t need linearity for determinism. Every effect is caused by every effect previous to it and will cause every effect after it. That is not linear, but it is deterministic.

That is linear. Any "chain" of causes and effects seperated into categories by a sequential ordering through time is a linear model of causality. Circular, or complex (nonlinear) causal models involve (at the very lest) events which cannot be determined as causes or effects other than by arbitrary categorization.

Linear, in this case, refers to events (causes/effects) occuring in a sequential order through time, like a "line".

 

[Me Myself]

That is linear. Any "chain" of causes and effects seperated into categories by a sequential ordering through time is a linear model of causality. Circular, or complex (nonlinear) causal models involve (at the very lest) events which cannot be determined as causes or effects other than by arbitrary categorization.

Linear, in this case, refers to events (causes/effects) occuring in a sequential order through time, like a "line".

so... you are unable to see how your actions have consequences?

Sure, that sounds like free will alright :sarcastic

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

so... you are unable to see how your actions have consequences?

Sure, that sounds like free will alright :sarcastic

How on earth do you get that from what I said?

 

[Satyamavejayanti]

Me Myself;3113052]Yes, it is up to us. What you still don´t seem to understand is that the "us" part is determined.

Do you determine who you are without any choice in the matter?

What are you proposing? what ifs exist? "ifs" are merely intellectual. They work for making projections, but when thinking "what if I had done x", but you did not do x because Y. It´s like saying, what if the tornado had gone right instead of left? well, lets not only think that by future, but by past. If the tornado had gone left, then that would have been because of different currents. If the tornado had different currents, then different events should have happened to make the currents be different.

Everything must change for the tornado to turn left. We have no reason to believe it is different with us. You say that it is different why? because we can imagine it could be? we can imagine a lot of things that doesn´t make them true. We like to think "I could have done differently". Sure. And the tornado could have gone a different direction. Except it didn´t, and it had it´s reasons. Just like you didn´t do differently and you had your reasons.

The tornado does not think about the reason of its direction, I do.
That is why the tornado does not have a choice in the matter, but I do.
The reason im on this site is because i had my reasons, but i chose this site out of many because i had a reason, not because i did not have a choice in the matter.

If I think I should have gone on another site because of some reason, there is nothing stopping me from doing that right now, its my choice.