Free will exists, it's simply not inherent

[Revoltingest]

I believe free will doesn't exist because it hasn't been shown to, and that it doesn't make sense.


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I believe that free will exists, but I have no choice in the matter (having been programmed to believe it).

 

[David T]

you got two paths, or ways they are 1. the negative, or selfish path, or the 2. positive , or the selfless path.

free will in action, it's your choice to believe whatever.

Excellently put. Jesus was confronted with exactly that dillma. He had two choices, walk away live to see another day, but everything you have been about will be a fraud. Walk to the cross, trust, die and stay true to who you are". Damned if you do damned if you don't. He had a chlice neither was appealing yet he chose. Joseph was confronted with that exAct same dilemma" accept this child as your own and lose all stature in the community, or have the mother and child executed, and keep your stTure, your upstanding theologically in the communities eyes knowing you have killed an innocent woman and an innocent childkimd of makes the story of Jesus and the adulteress woman rather powerful I would say.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

It seems one the biggest issues with free will is how it can fit in with a mindless, uncaring, deterministic universe. The modern acceptance of things like material reductionism makes it hard for most of us to see beyond the mindless flow of nature, even to the point of ignoring our own consciousness and its impact.

Now sure, when you're born and growing up there's likely limited, if any, free will. We have to be taught things like emotional regulation, sharing, control of one's physical body, critical thinking and meta cognition, etc and so on. It is these things that lead to increasing amounts of free will. To illustrate, take a scenario where someone angers you and you want to hit them. In a truly deterministic universe you would hit them, end of story. But as humans, thanks to higher consciousness, we can recognize such emotions arising in us, and control ourselves rather than simply reacting in a linear way.

Of course there are massive limits on free will, there's unending external influences and laws of reality itself. This does not mean free will does not exist. People can recognize and overcome influence, it's this fact that has allowed our species to come so far. In a deterministic universe you die from illness, you don't understand it, manipulate nature, and create a cure for it. You attack when you are angered, you don't manage your emotions. You become terrified or mystified by natural experiences like thunder and wind, you don't come to understand and even harness them. It could almost be said that along with higher consciousness, free will is an emergent property.

I believe in the illusion of freewill. The way we experience time linearly makes it so we can only see behind, yet never forward. Yet, take time out of the equation, and all factors can be predetermined. Causality encompasses everything on the macro scale, and on the quantum scale we are left fumbling around with undeveloped science.

It seems unlikely to me that we are somehow, magically, exempt.

 

[1137]

I believe in the illusion of freewill. The way we experience time linearly makes it so we can only see behind, yet never forward. Yet, take time out of the equation, and all factors can be predetermined. Causality encompasses everything on the macro scale, and on the quantum scale we are left fumbling around with undeveloped science.

It seems unlikely to me that we are somehow, magically, exempt.

I don't personally see any magic behind evolution and emergence, though you may differ. What WOULD be magical is for the physiology of the brain to randomly change from one predetermined course to an entirely different one. It's much more likely and reasonable to think humans have evolved and refined a veto to determinism, as well illustrated already by self regulation. So it is evolution and adaptation, or does the brain do whatever it feels like despite biological laws?

 

[idav]

I believe free will doesn't exist because it hasn't been shown to, and that it doesn't make sense.


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You can't have free will without believing you can over come whatever deterministic obstacle. If a person says they've lost the battle won't do much in convincing them otherwise.

 

[idav]

It seems one the biggest issues with free will is how it can fit in with a mindless, uncaring, deterministic universe. The modern acceptance of things like material reductionism makes it hard for most of us to see beyond the mindless flow of nature, even to the point of ignoring our own consciousness and its impact.

Now sure, when you're born and growing up there's likely limited, if any, free will. We have to be taught things like emotional regulation, sharing, control of one's physical body, critical thinking and meta cognition, etc and so on. It is these things that lead to increasing amounts of free will. To illustrate, take a scenario where someone angers you and you want to hit them. In a truly deterministic universe you would hit them, end of story. But as humans, thanks to higher consciousness, we can recognize such emotions arising in us, and control ourselves rather than simply reacting in a linear way.

Of course there are massive limits on free will, there's unending external influences and laws of reality itself. This does not mean free will does not exist. People can recognize and overcome influence, it's this fact that has allowed our species to come so far. In a deterministic universe you die from illness, you don't understand it, manipulate nature, and create a cure for it. You attack when you are angered, you don't manage your emotions. You become terrified or mystified by natural experiences like thunder and wind, you don't come to understand and even harness them. It could almost be said that along with higher consciousness, free will is an emergent property.

The way I see it is consciousness of humans depends on our ability to calculate future outcomes and alter them. I think that the inherent fundamental nature of things crosses boundaries of time and space allowing free will to exist in opposition of a purely deterministic reality.

 

[1137]

The way I see it is consciousness of humans depends on our ability to calculate future outcomes and alter them. I think that the inherent fundamental nature of things crosses boundaries of time and space allowing free will to exist in opposition of a purely deterministic reality.

Could you possibly elaborate?

 

[idav]

Could you possibly elaborate?

Basically that quantum physics shows nature of reality to be non deterministic and that free will needs that to be true to exist and it would also make freedom to choose between future events inherent.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

I don't personally see any magic behind evolution and emergence, though you may differ. What WOULD be magical is for the physiology of the brain to randomly change from one predetermined course to an entirely different one. It's much more likely and reasonable to think humans have evolved and refined a veto to determinism, as well illustrated already by self regulation. So it is evolution and adaptation, or does the brain do whatever it feels like despite biological laws?

I think you are looking at causality too simplisticly.
It's not this than this than that in some linear progression but rather an infinitely complex web of cause and effect, actors and subjects.

You are suggesting that humans developed the ability to break the known rules of physics as an emergent property? That's quite the premise you have there....

 

[1137]

I think you are looking at causality too simplisticly.
It's not this than this than that in some linear progression but rather an infinitely complex web of cause and effect, actors and subjects.

You are suggesting that humans developed the ability to break the known rules of physics as an emergent property? That's quite the premise you have there....

Hey a straw man! I'm shocked.

 

[Satans_Serrated_Edge]

Hey a straw man! I'm shocked.

Huh? What part did I misrepresent?

You described causality in linear terms, so not the first bit, and any step outside of causality(as per your main premise - IE freewill exists)is a step outside of known physics, by necessity.

 

[viole]

It seems one the biggest issues with free will is how it can fit in with a mindless, uncaring, deterministic universe. The modern acceptance of things like material reductionism makes it hard for most of us to see beyond the mindless flow of nature, even to the point of ignoring our own consciousness and its impact.

Now sure, when you're born and growing up there's likely limited, if any, free will. We have to be taught things like emotional regulation, sharing, control of one's physical body, critical thinking and meta cognition, etc and so on. It is these things that lead to increasing amounts of free will. To illustrate, take a scenario where someone angers you and you want to hit them. In a truly deterministic universe you would hit them, end of story. But as humans, thanks to higher consciousness, we can recognize such emotions arising in us, and control ourselves rather than simply reacting in a linear way.

Of course there are massive limits on free will, there's unending external influences and laws of reality itself. This does not mean free will does not exist. People can recognize and overcome influence, it's this fact that has allowed our species to come so far. In a deterministic universe you die from illness, you don't understand it, manipulate nature, and create a cure for it. You attack when you are angered, you don't manage your emotions. You become terrified or mystified by natural experiences like thunder and wind, you don't come to understand and even harness them. It could almost be said that along with higher consciousness, free will is an emergent property.

Well, you said it yourself, that is something that allowed us to go that far.

And that is why I suspect that not following linear reactions, as you called them, might be an adaptive behaviour. For sure that does not entail that determinism is false, it just entails that there are brakes that are able to control our first instinct. And those brakes could be perfectly deterministic, as well.

Ciao

- viole

 

[1137]

Well, you said it yourself, that is something that allowed us to go that far.

And that is why I suspect that not following linear reactions, as you called them, might be an adaptive behaviour. For sure that does not entail that determinism is false, it just entails that there are brakes that are able to control our first instinct. And those brakes could be perfectly deterministic, as well.

Ciao

- viole

Why could free will not be an emergent property, and why would it not be an evolutionary benefit?

 

[viole]

Why could free will not be an emergent property, and why would it not be an evolutionary benefit?

It is an evolutionary benefit. Many defective intuitions are an evolutionary benefit. The fact that our intuitions cannot grasp anything which is fundamentally true is just the result of evolutionary pressure towards building brains in a certain way.

Like Plantinga said, if naturalism was true, then our innate belief building systems would not be reliable. He is right, they are not reliable. The illusion of true free will is one of them.

I just reject true and inherent free will on pure physical grounds. In other words, if true libertarian free will existed, I would have to throw averything I know of physics in the garbage bin. That price is simply not justified if we consider that there are much cheaper alternatives.

Ciao

- viole