Free will, Determinism, God, & aTheism

[JerryL]

Well I differentiate two types of (1) reasoning, being:
1a) Determined / logical / causal
and
1b) Creative / spontaneous / free

1a is fairly obvious, whereas 1b would require one to experience an amount of time spent
in a creative pursuit, like, music, art or sculpture, pottery, even sport.

I play several instruments. I'm involved in several sports. I paint.

So define away.

Everything is either deterministic , or not (or some mix of the two).
Not deterministic is, by definition, random.

Deterministic isn't free. Random isn't will.

 

[JerryL]

So if a Theist wanted to convert someone to Theism they would have to first convince them of free will?
whereas
If an aTheist wanted to do a similar 'conversion' then they would need to convince them of determinism?

Nope. The existince or lack thereof of a god is independent of the fact that "free will" in an absolute sense is impossible.

Surely a legal system which punishes a person for doing wrong is implying that they had
the freedom to choose to act differently?
Because otherwise all criminals are not responsible for their own actions,
they could just argue that they were fated to commit their crimes.

You are cherry picking. The reaction is as deterministic is the action.

I don't care if the bear trying to eat me is only doing so because he has to: I'm still going to kill him.

Also: I think "punish" is a stupid reason for a justice system; but that's another topic.

 

[Soundwave99]

I put "I'm confused", as at this point, we have no real way of knowing if free will exists or not. There have been experiments that show that human reactions seem to be determined by our subconsciouses, but that doesn't necessarily prove that free will doesn't exist. I would classify myself as a "free-will agnostic". I guess that makes my full title a "dictionary atheist naturalist free will agnostic".

If determinism is true though, then there's a bit of a paradox. If free will doesn't exist, then whether many or not you believe in free will or not would be determined.

Leaving the wiki article link to the free will experiment here, as it's the only non-biased source I could find about it: Neuroscience of free will - Wikipedia

 

[LuisDantas]

I never met a definition of free will that I found useful. It seems to be just an attempt at compensating the contradictions of Abrahamic-styled deity with another contradictory concept.

 

[SpiritQuest]

Free will is the will to create. We do not have free will because only God's will is free. God shares His will with us when we receive it and then our will is also free. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves. That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you." Your mind has been programmed by inductive reasoning(sensory feedback and FEARS) over many years. RE-programming may take much discipline and experimentation.

To walk among the gods.

Psalm 82 in part reads, ...God Presides in the Great Assembly...
…They do not know nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, "You are gods, And all of you are sons of the Most High. "Nevertheless you will die like men And fall like any one of the princes."…

 

[crossfire]

Voted "there is no free will and no god" as a materialist and a determinist: If consciousness is a physical process (as in materialism) it obeys physical laws of cause and effect (as in determinism).

I'm not sure its true of all materialists btw. There is more than one way to be a materialist.

You can also reprogram your thought patterns by breaking old habits and building new habits. You can have a hand at guiding future cause and effect.

 

[Deidre]

I voted ''God has given us free will.'' Although the deterministic concept is very convincing in terms of us not really having ''free will.'' Maybe just the illusion of free will. But, at least to me, I feel like I'm making choices that direct my life to some degree. Am I alone in that?

 

[viole]

I was reading recently how the Indian traditions associate free will with theism
whereas materialism suggests a deterministic paradigm.

Do you think there is validity to this pairing?

There are, after all many thinkers who see theism as deterministic
and aTheism requiring free will.

I find the link between these ideas intriguing.
Does anyone have any strong reasons either way?

Agnostic philosophers are encouraged to contribute.

Well, it depends.

I don't think there is a strong dichotomy. Many philosophers manage also to make sense of free will and accountability under a regime of strict determinism. They are called compatibilists, I think. Atheist philosopher D. Dennet is one of them.

I personally think that true free will is absurd. However, it is like playing roulette. You can effectively apply the laws of probability to something that is inherently deterministic. And that is because the fine details of the balls, the roulette, the air resistence, the initial momentum of both the wheel and the ball, the slight imperfection of the roulette surface, etc. are inscrutable. And tend to cancel each other. So, we settle for a random event, effectively.

In the same way, i think we can settle for freedom of will, even if the underlying processes that lead to a decision acting on the physical Universe, are strictly deterministic. And they cannot be otherwise, if physical information is preserved.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Quintessence]

Poll doesn't really work well for me, but I voted for the top option since it was closest. My gods (not God) are everything, and since I understand reality to be causal, the gods/everything determine/cause everything. The causal networks are very complicated though - everything is connected to everything else, and that sort of thing.

 

[Kapalika]

What if freewill and determinism are both false dichotomies that have no bearing on the actual mechanisms of reality?

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

For me, it's inconsequential. I don't believe in determinism either way. I believe the more complex and thus unrestricted our minds, the more free will we is possible to us. A non-human animal is much restricted by not having language like ours on the choices they can take.

That seems ambiguous. If we have some free will, then not everything is pre-determined.
That is what is meant by free will. Would you agree that not everything is inevitable?

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Poll doesn't really work well for me, but I voted for the top option since it was closest. My gods (not God) are everything, and since I understand reality to be causal, the gods/everything determine/cause everything. The causal networks are very complicated though - everything is connected to everything else, and that sort of thing.

It seems to me that if everything is caused and pre-ordained, then there is no need to attempt anything original.
The very concept of 'attempt' necessitates that everything is not determined; that our 'will to be' affects what
we can become (or not).

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Thats a complicated question.

I'd say an theist has to convince someone of free will to become a theist (because god is a non physical consciousness that is independent of physical laws).

The term atheist is extremely problematic because there is no one "atheism". But if someone is a materialist, determinism and a form of atheism will probably follow.

Determinism does not mean that people lack "agency" and are exclusively passive. They are driven by necessity and have to act on it. The fact they act on it involves conscious design and therefore responsibility. One consequence of such a deterministic legal philosophy though is the belief you can "predict crime". So thats why in the Soviet Union they would punish people for being of the wrong social class or having the wrong ideas because they was a indicator of a propensity for future criminal or counter-revolutionary activity. Thats pretty evil honestly.

Curious that an aTheist would use a word like 'evil'.
Nonetheless if genetic science could claim to predict criminal behavior would it be justified to incarcerate
a person before the crime was committed? I would guess that most atheists who also are materialist determinists
and who believe that genes govern behavior would consider it a necessity to do this.
And yet, surely this is counter-intuitive from an ethics perspective.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

I play several instruments. I'm involved in several sports. I paint.

So define away.

Everything is either deterministic , or not (or some mix of the two).
Not deterministic is, by definition, random.

Deterministic isn't free. Random isn't will.

I disagree. Random is defined as complex determinism, just that it is too complex
to predict in normal situations.

I do agree that random isn't will, however.

But if you say that deterministic isn't free, then you contradict yourself
because you say that not deterministic is random; whereas random is just complex determinism.

I see no reason why you require a binary system that entails either determinism or random.
Something can determine beyond itself with being determined itself.
After all if everything is pre-determined then there is no reason for us to be blind to
what the future will hold.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Nope. The existince or lack thereof of a god is independent of the fact that "free will" in an absolute sense is impossible.

Hypothetically:
So if I built an Uber-computer that could predict every event in the world.
And that showed that you could one day bet your entire life-savings on 'red' at the casino;
and I showed you numerous reasons for the Uber-computer being perfect at prediction.
Then
You would not be able to help yourself.
You would not be able to pick black instead.
You would lose everything.

You are cherry picking. The reaction is as deterministic is the action.

I don't care if the bear trying to eat me is only doing so because he has to: I'm still going to kill him.

Also: I think "punish" is a stupid reason for a justice system; but that's another topic.

So if genetic science could predict criminal genes you would execute a child with those genes?

 

[Laika]

Curious that an aTheist would use a word like 'evil'.
Nonetheless if genetic science could claim to predict criminal behavior would it be justified to incarcerate
a person before the crime was committed? I would guess that most atheists who also are materialist determinists
and who believe that genes govern behavior would consider it a necessity to do this.
And yet, surely this is counter-intuitive from an ethics perspective.

Its a possibility but very extreme, as I think many social darwinists supported sterilisation of certian social groups considered "inferior" such as professional/habitual criminals in the 1920's/30's.

Skinner v. Oklahoma - Wikipedia

What you are looking for is known as "socio-biology" which is a theory that biology determines social behaviour.

Sociobiology - Wikipedia

The problem from ethics is to do with "agency" and whether a person could be held responsible for a crime if it were genetically determined. A "solution" is treating such people as animals governed by instincts and incapable of reason and therefore incapable of exercising and not entitled to rights. Of course, this sort of "animalization" can work in the other direction in that if it were a conditioned behaviour, criminals could be "trained" into accepting authority through reward or punishment. The link below is in the right area:

Behaviorism - Wikipedia

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Well, it depends.

I don't think there is a strong dichotomy. Many philosophers manage also to make sense of free will and accountability under a regime of strict determinism. They are called compatibilists, I think. Atheist philosopher D. Dennet is one of them.

I personally think that true free will is absurd. However, it is like playing roulette. You can effectively apply the laws of probability to something that is inherently deterministic. And that is because the fine details of the balls, the roulette, the air resistence, the initial momentum of both the wheel and the ball, the slight imperfection of the roulette surface, etc. are inscrutable. And tend to cancel each other. So, we settle for a random event, effectively.

In the same way, i think we can settle for freedom of will, even if the underlying processes that lead to a decision acting on the physical Universe, are strictly deterministic. And they cannot be otherwise, if physical information is preserved.

Ciao

- viole

Sounds like plain contradiction.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is quite 'scrutable', and provides plenty of wiggle-room
for a free will in the person; and on a Theistic scale; as well as non-corporeal beings too.

When one analyzes such fence-sitting, it results most often in denying free-will except as illusion.

Your mistake is to reduce it to a dichotomy of determinism and 'random'.
Although the word 'random' is defined as complex unpredictable order,
perhaps you would be better of using the word 'chaos'.
But you see, chaos by definition would be incapable of making rational choices
or even approach anything near survival (as a thought process).

Whereas when a philosopher chooses to think about one topic rather than another,
if such a choice were pre-determined, then she would not need to choose to think about that topic,
because being absolutely pre-determined she would know what it is in every logical detail of that topic.
So choosing to think would be impossible.
Pre-determined thought would necessitate absolute knowledge
if every thought was purely logical/causal/determined.

But when we choose to think, it is our only real free choice.
If it were not free, we would already know, and thus not need to choose.

It is our ignorance which liberates us.
And neither could this be a chaotic process or else we would make more awful decisions than we do.

 

[Jonathan Ainsley Bain]

Its a possibility but very extreme, as I think many social darwinists supported sterilisation of certian social groups considered "inferior" such as professional/habitual criminals in the 1920's/30's.

Skinner v. Oklahoma - Wikipedia

What you are looking for is known as "socio-biology" which is a theory that biology determines social behaviour.

Sociobiology - Wikipedia

The problem from ethics is to do with "agency" and whether a person could be held responsible for a crime if it were genetically determined. A "solution" is treating such people as animals governed by instincts and incapable of reason and therefore incapable of exercising and not entitled to rights. Of course, this sort of "animalization" can work in the other direction in that if it were a conditioned behaviour, criminals could be "trained" into accepting authority through reward or punishment. The link below is in the right area:

Behaviorism - Wikipedia

So you agree with all of that do you?

 

[Curious George]

We all believe in some things. Both free will and cause and effect are curious cases. Both seem to evade attempts proofs, yet we ALL believe in both.

 

[crossfire]

It seems to me that if everything is caused and pre-ordained, then there is no need to attempt anything original.
The very concept of 'attempt' necessitates that everything is not determined; that our 'will to be' affects what
we can become (or not).

Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing being want to exclusively create pre-programmed, micromanaged beings? What assurance would such a being have that they are not delusional--that all of it is a product of their all-powerful mind? Wouldn't the creation of beings with free-will be necessary who can create events/things that are not part of the script in order to give assurance to such an all-powerful being that they are not delusional? What could be more precious to an all-powerful creator than something that wasn't a product of their own mind?