• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Free Will

F1fan

Veteran Member
Conviction have you? Thankfully I can't be accused of such faulty logic.
You made claims you have failed to demostrate are true, or even likley true.

But I have. See my threads in the religion section of sciforums, first page.
What I have seen of your posts thus far is a laziness to fully argue your claims, and I have no desire to run down your other posts as if there will be a better standard.

See what throwing around false accusations gets you?
By observing you, yes.

A total misunderstanding of reality. Hopefully, with my logical proofs of God in the religion section of sciforums, you will be awoken to what the top minds in theology and metaphysics (including myself) have to say about the inner workings of reality.
Such bold claims of victory on an internet forum that somehow hasn't made front page news all over the world.
 

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
Say you come up with a new idea, that has no precedence. It is outside the box of social awareness and social acceptability. This leads to the primitive fear of novelty in others. The external pressure is on to bury the idea and speak no more of it; social determinism.

But you decide that the determinism of the collective fear, does not disprove the idea, so you choose to develop the idea in spite of social determinism pushing the other way. Is this free will and if not where did the unknown determinism come from to create something new?

The Bible was among the first to introduce the concert of free will and choice. Adam was considered above the animals but below the Angels. Adam was given the job of naming the animals, without any outside peer pressure. He had free choice to call each species anything he wished. This can occur with the unconscious mind, synthesizing his sensory data and feelings, into a sound, on demand. It is not much different than the scientist using a computer to do the data crunching, on demand, he cannot do on his/her own.

Above the animals meant he was no longer under natural instinct, since if he was under natural instinct he would be just a human animal. What is the next step above the human animal in terms of evolution? It would be someone who is not fully under natural human instinct, but rather someone who was free will to choose these natural humans instinct or not. Again, one would need to self reflect and based on observations, free will allows intern synthesis, on demand, for unnatural choices that can enhance or regress instinct.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil is learned knowledge from culture, which acts in the capacity of social determinism. Instinct starts inside and is not learned or taught. This is an internal determinism; blind impulse. As one learns the mechanics of instinct, one can alter natural behavior away from the natural center created by natural internal and/or the external social determinism. I do this all the time. I am proof.
 

Yerda

Veteran Member
I agree.
In Indian philosophy free will usually simply means self-will, ie the desires and intentions that spring from within myself as opposed to forced upon by factors external to the self. That understanding is far less problematic.
This is the only way I can make sense of the issue.

If we were to imagine Alice, who is an electron, being whooshed around by the local electric field despite the fact she'd quite like to stop for ice-cream and also Bob, who is a human, who appears to be able to walk to the ice-cream place in all manner of physical sitautions around him we get an idea of what it means to have free will.

If we imagine that Bob is unfree because the parts of him (like his brain or his gut) obey the laws of physics I think we lose the meaning of the expression.
 

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
Free Will is one of those concepts that seems stranger and stranger the more I think about it.

Would I not *expect* my decisions to be based on my desires, my experiences, my biases, my psychology, what is available, etc? And, if the causal nexus of all of those leading to my 'choice' happens within my body, even within my brain, is that not then *my* choice? And would that not be the case even in a deterministic setting?

So what does the adjective 'free' mean in this context?

Does it mean that even if *I* am exactly the same and *everything* else is exactly the same, I would potentially make a different decision?

And, in that case, is the definition of 'free will' such that it requires the decision be an 'uncaused cause'?
"Free" means just that, that it was "my" choice (as opposed to "god" or circumstance or a causal nexus). It means that we assign a "me" to that "causal nexus."
That's all it means, in my opinion.

IMO, it doesn't mean that there's an alternate universe where you chose differently, other than a thought experiment. I'm ambiguous about the multiverse.

Free will was never the uncaused cause. It was always caused by "me."
 

Polymath257

Think & Care
Staff member
Premium Member
"Free" means just that, that it was "my" choice (as opposed to "god" or circumstance or a causal nexus). It means that we assign a "me" to that "causal nexus."
That's all it means, in my opinion.

IMO, it doesn't mean that there's an alternate universe where you chose differently, other than a thought experiment. I'm ambiguous about the multiverse.

Free will was never the uncaused cause. It was always caused by "me."

And so the problem becomes identifying what, precisely, is 'you'. If the causal nexus is inside of my skull, does that mean the choice was mine? And, if so, does that mean that free will and determinism are consistent?
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
I'm not sure even that qualifies as mathematical metaphysics.


I haven’t read it tbh. I’m familiar with some of Penrose’s ideas though, particularly the Penrose triangle, with it’s three interdependent worlds; the physical, mental, and mathematical/Platonic world. He argues that matter, consciousness, and mathematics are three fundamental properties of reality. Which sounds like a metaphysical proposition to which maths is key.
 
Last edited:

Willamena

Just me
Premium Member
And so the problem becomes identifying what, precisely, is 'you'. If the causal nexus is inside of my skull, does that mean the choice was mine? And, if so, does that mean that free will and determinism are consistent?
In my view, "me" is a thing I call myself, to quote Julie Andrews. It's a grammatical symbol or placeholder for the subject of both my language and my empirical worldview. It's an identifier for reference, and a social construct for orienting myself in my family, my community, and my society. It doesn't have to be anything more complicated than that. It's a ghost in the machine, figuratively speaking. In recognizing "me" as such, free will (the ghost) and determinism (the machine) cannot help but be compatible.
 

RestlessSoul

Well-Known Member
In my view, "me" is a thing I call myself, to quote Julie Andrews. It's a grammatical symbol or placeholder for the subject of both my language and my empirical worldview. It's an identifier for reference, and a social construct for orienting myself in my family, my community, and my society. It doesn't have to be anything more complicated than that. It's a ghost in the machine, figuratively speaking. In recognizing "me" as such, free will (the ghost) and determinism (the machine) cannot help but be compatible.


Some confusion is sure to arise, however, when I try to differentiate that which is me, from those things that are not me. If I and my environment are inseparable, doesn’t that make any definition of me necessarily incomplete? I am looking out at the world from within, yet the vision I have of the world is held within my mind. So where do I end, and the external world begin?
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Would I not *expect* my decisions to be based on my desires, my experiences, my biases, my psychology, what is available, etc? And, if the causal nexus of all of those leading to my 'choice' happens within my body, even within my brain, is that not then *my* choice? And would that not be the case even in a deterministic setting?

This is surely just the compatibilist view? As far as I can see, this is the only version of 'free will' that makes the slightest bit of sense. After reading though this thread (at least most of it, anyway ;)) I can't see any serious objections or alternatives.

So what does the adjective 'free' mean in this context?

Just that the you (as you described above) can do whatever you want.
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
I haven’t read it tbh.

I have (although a long time ago) and it's part of a very long-winded argument that tries to show that minds are not computable (they are doing something that an algorithm couldn't), although he wasn't, IIRC, trying to say that they weren't deterministic. I generally like Penrose's ideas but this was rather unconvincing even to me and, much more importantly, didn't convince many experts in the relevant fields either. I don't see how it was in any way metaphysics. His aim was to introduce some new ideas in physics that related directly to consciousness.
 
Last edited:

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Go out of your home with no idea where you want to end up. Turn left or right at your choice.

Like all possible decisions you make are limited in the above you have only two possible choices. The above is kind of unrealistic anyway. This is true of all decisions on makes in life. Your choices are limited by the consequences of the chain of previous decisions, Natural Laws, Culture, male or female or other, and many other circumstances,

At best we have the potential of very limited 'freedom within a limited range of choices in you decision making process. Various forms of compatibilism best describe the limited degree of possible free will.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
Like all possible decisions you make are limited in the above you have only two possible choices. The above is kind of unrealistic anyway. This is true of all decisions on makes in life. Your choices are limited by the consequences of the chain of previous decisions, Natural Laws, Culture, male or female or other, and many other circumstances,

At best we have the potential of very limited 'freedom within a limited range of choices in you decision making process. Various forms of compatibilism best describe the limited degree of possible free will.
It is a choice made freely, end of story
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
It is a choice made freely, end of story

I think a choice made basically on a whim (as you seem to be describing) is still something that you end up choosing for some reason, even if you're not consciously aware of what that reason is. The alternative is that you are accessing something that is truly random, or at least effectively random with respect to who you are (your personality, preferences, etc.). You might call the latter 'free' but you lose the 'will' part of it because it's no longer a matter of what you decide or want.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
I think a choice made basically on a whim (as you seem to be describing) is still something that you end up choosing for some reason, even if you're not consciously aware of what that reason is. The alternative is that you are accessing something that is truly random, or at least effectively random with respect to who you are (your personality, preferences, etc.). You might call the latter 'free' but you lose the 'will' part of it because it's no longer a matter of what you decide or want.

That was my point, one can make random choices
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Are you suggesting that we should not be held responsible for our actions?
If not, then what are you suggesting?
NO! That is not the issue I am addressing concerning 'free will.' The 'rule of law' applies to crime committed in terms of guilt or innocence, and NOT whether there is a 'free will' decision involved. Without 'rule of law' our society would be chaos.

Though such factors such as mental illness are taken into consideration in the ;rule of law.' The criteria in the 'rule of law' is whether the individual charged with a crime is competent to know what is right or wrong and the consequences of committing the crime.

Actually the debate over 'free will,' 'no free will,; or degrees of 'free will' is more a sideline subjective philosophical debate with religious implications. and despite which is true the course of the fallible human journey goes on regardless.
 
Last edited:
Top