No god, do we have free will?

[ericoh2]

You could say we don't have free will, but then we need a new term for the decision-making, planning, and self-awareness that distinguishes an intelligent, thinking being from inanimate matter.

Wouldn't it be most useful to simply say, we do have free will, with free will defined in this way? Then you wouldn't have to accept unsound ideas, like the idea that humans are somehow outside of the mechanics of Nature, but on the other hand you wouldn't be neglecting the obvious and important fact that intelligence and decision-making IS something that occurs in nature and it's worth distinguishing from the usual case of unthinking matter.

And there is no denying we experience things, like the ability to examine the likely consequences of our actions, and make decisions accordingly. This is an undeniable experience, I think materialist/atheists make a mistake by trying to deny it. The real issue is that this experience does not require humans to have magic powers or to have minds which exist outside the laws of nature. It requires an information-processor, like a brain.

You do have a point here. The main problem I come across in this forum is a lack of a clear definition of the topic at hand. So it seems here that it really all depends on how we define freedom of will and until that is clarified the conversation really cannot move forward.

 

[dust1n]

You could say we don't have free will, but then we need a new term for the decision-making, planning, and self-awareness that distinguishes an intelligent, thinking being from inanimate matter.

We are 'conscious'?

Wouldn't it be most useful to simply say, we do have free will, with free will defined in this way? Then you wouldn't have to accept unsound ideas, like the idea that humans are somehow outside of the mechanics of Nature, but on the other hand you wouldn't be neglecting the obvious and important fact that intelligence and decision-making IS something that occurs in nature and it's worth distinguishing from the usual case of unthinking matter.

It would be easier to just say 'conscious', to prevent any confusion.

And there is no denying we experience things, like the ability to examine the likely consequences of our actions, and make decisions accordingly. This is an undeniable experience, I think materialist/atheists make a mistake by trying to deny it. The real issue is that this experience does not require humans to have magic powers or to have minds which exist outside the laws of nature. It requires an information-processor, like a brain.

I didn't deny we experienced things. We observe them and feel them, sure.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

But you could be conscious without having decision-making and planning abilities. A child could be conscious that he is wetting his pants, that is different from having control and making decisions.

 

[Yerda]

I'll be honest, I have difficulty at times figuring out what all the terms involved mean. I read Dan Dennett's book Freedom Evolves and it made some sense, but I'm not sure I fully grasped the details of every argument.

I don't believe that detereminism is an obstruction to free will. I think that may be my only semi-solid opinion on the matter.

 

[MSizer]

I'm yet undecided on this question. Autonomy vs. heteronomy is a very important aspect of life though that we need to better understand in order to improve our sense of justice.

For example, on the one hand, it doesn't seem to me like we have free will at all. The universe is completely made up of molecules, and each molecule has a force acting upon it. Therefore, each and every molecule is a slave to its current state plus the force acting on it. In a nutshell, if you could know the location of every molecule in the universe, and the force acting on it, you could literally predict the future. However, that means that every single action is a re-action from a previous state. If that is true, then free will does not exist.

I haven't figured out how that is incorrect yet, but it feels like it is incorrect to me.

The reason I think it's so important is because I think we are emprisoning people who were born to do certain things, but we assume they have the ability to control themselves just becuase we can. Say for example, if I dislike the taste of alcohol, but my neighbor was born into a family where alcohol abuse was the norm, is it fair for me to think he's a bad person? The cards are stacked in my favour. If I liked alcohol, and my father had been a drunk, chances are I wouldn't be sober either.

I think the pursuit of understanding autonomy vs. heteronomy should be our most important goal, so that we can start preventing social disorderly conduct rather than punishing those who have already commited it.

 

[Yerda]

If that is true, then free will does not exist.

Have you read Freedom Evolves?

 

[Tiapan]

Since God has been conspicuous by his total absence over the last 3-4000 years, he doesnt even turn up to church services, he must be one lazy sod. Perhaps he's stoned or drunk some where. So of what relevance is he anyway, both "will" and "free" are doing fine with out him.

Cheers

 

[dust1n]

But you could be conscious without having decision-making and planning abilities. A child could be conscious that he is wetting his pants, that is different from having control and making decisions.

I know, that's why I would want to use the world conscious. I don't think we have any will to dictate our actions. Someone who has decision making and planning abilities is obviously more conscious than a child, and a child is obviously more conscious than a plant. I don't think the ability to witness existence is a black or white ordeal.

 

[dust1n]

I'm yet undecided on this question. Autonomy vs. heteronomy is a very important aspect of life though that we need to better understand in order to improve our sense of justice.

For example, on the one hand, it doesn't seem to me like we have free will at all. The universe is completely made up of molecules, and each molecule has a force acting upon it. Therefore, each and every molecule is a slave to its current state plus the force acting on it. In a nutshell, if you could know the location of every molecule in the universe, and the force acting on it, you could literally predict the future. However, that means that every single action is a re-action from a previous state. If that is true, then free will does not exist.

I haven't figured out how that is incorrect yet, but it feels like it is incorrect to me.

The reason I think it's so important is because I think we are emprisoning people who were born to do certain things, but we assume they have the ability to control themselves just becuase we can. Say for example, if I dislike the taste of alcohol, but my neighbor was born into a family where alcohol abuse was the norm, is it fair for me to think he's a bad person? The cards are stacked in my favour. If I liked alcohol, and my father had been a drunk, chances are I wouldn't be sober either.

I think the pursuit of understanding autonomy vs. heteronomy should be our most important goal, so that we can start preventing social disorderly conduct rather than punishing those who have already commited it.

That's why most people are afraid determinism, they use their ability to practice justice. They might actually have to come to terms that there is no justice!

 

[dust1n]

Since God has been conspicuous by his total absence over the last 3-4000 years, he doesnt even turn up to church services, he must be one lazy sod. Perhaps he's stoned or drunk some where. So of what relevance is he anyway, both "will" and "free" are doing fine with out him.

Cheers

He's really not relevant. His supposed existence just gives me more arguments against free will. Plus I didn't want to argue with theists over the subject. I just wanted to discuss with nontheists.

 

[Atheist Waddle Dee]

If by free-will you mean contra-causal free will then no.

 

[bobhikes]

I too pondered this.

All things react to something, we are just complicated things so we could be just reacting to things we don't understand fully (the butterfly effect); however knowledge is not a thing.

Knowledge is a product of past events. It is based on our views of past events but still on things that have already happened. It is not a reaction but a recording of reactions. Knowledge can effect our actions by changing our normal insticts.

If now you just react you are following the normal patterns of life(butterfly effect). If you stop and think about it you change the pattern. You do not have to think about it you can just react the action of thinking stops the pattern. If you used knowledge to decide you furture seperated from the patterns.

 

[dust1n]

I too pondered this.

All things react to something, we are just complicated things so we could be just reacting to things we don't understand fully (the butterfly effect); however knowledge is not a thing.

Knowledge is a product of past events. It is based on our views of past events but still on things that have already happened. It is not a reaction but a recording of reactions. Knowledge can effect our actions by changing our normal insticts.

If now you just react you are following the normal patterns of life(butterfly effect). If you stop and think about it you change the pattern. You do not have to think about it you can just react the action of thinking stops the pattern. If you used knowledge to decide you furture seperated from the patterns.

If knowledge is a product of past events (which is entirely out of will), even if it is just an observation, and it changes the future, this would be compliant with the 'butterfly effect', because the action formed on knowledge would also be subject to the past events in which knowledge is a product of.

 

[bobhikes]

If knowledge is a product of past events (which is entirely out of will), even if it is just an observation, and it changes the future, this would be compliant with the 'butterfly effect', because the action formed on knowledge would also be subject to the past events in which knowledge is a product of.

I don't agree. If I know lava is hot I am not going to touch it. If I don't I will react instictivly. I did not learn not to touch lava from touching I learned from a book by a writer I never met. He learned it from some one else. You would have to go back 1000's maybe millions of years to find out who actually started the thought. There is no link or butterfly effect back that far.

Links have to be concurrent. One following another. With written word it may sit on a self for years before it is learned by someone else. They may have bought the book because they wanted to read about flowers a possible link but the author started talking about hawaii's flowers and metioned lava. There is no link. It is random chance.

You can not know every word in a book. Yet every word is knowledge and it may just be one that changes your life. Your selection of the book has nothing to do with every word in the book so the link is broken.

 

[dust1n]

I don't agree. If I know lava is hot I am not going to touch it. If I don't I will react instictivly. I did not learn not to touch lava from touching I learned from a book by a writer I never met. He learned it from some one else. You would have to go back 1000's maybe millions of years to find out who actually started the thought. There is no link or butterfly effect back that far.

Well, it would be my opinion that no one (or at least very few) people would touch lava for many other reasons than just reading about in a book. First, one could feel the heat within a distant of the lava, a sense that allows to body to know what might be damaging to touch. Secondly, one could figure this out without neither touching or reading about it... even if one did read about it, doesn't necessarily mean the words 'lava is hot' or 'lava is 1000 degrees F' would need to be present to draw the same conclusion. Of course, different people learn better different ways.

Links have to be concurrent. One following another. With written word it may sit on a self for years before it is learned by someone else. They may have bought the book because they wanted to read about flowers a possible link but the author started talking about hawaii's flowers and metioned lava. There is no link. It is random chance.

Just because it is random chance does not make it of will - as well, the reader purchased the book thinking it was about Hawaii's flowers, a subject they were originally interested in, but stumbled by chance and noted that lava was, in fact, hot. The chain here being, people saw book they thought was about their particular interest, stumbled upon information they happened to find interesting in and of itself or within context, and thus learned the fact lava was 'hot'. Even if the piece of the chain is not immediately definable, especially without a proper understanding of the 'link's context does not necessarily conclude that the link does not exist, mainly because it is possible and more than like probable (considering the understanding that humans can't compute all present information), that we simply do not understand the nature of the link and how it might be defined or identified in a 'cause/reaction' equation, yet.

You can not know every word in a book.

Which makes it hard to practice the will...

Yet every word is knowledge and it may just be one that changes your life.

Which does not attribute to any assertion of the existence of will. Simply because one 'wills' it to be the case means it might come true, does not even mean it is going to happen; or that if it was going to happen that it had anything to do with will at all.

Your selection of the book has nothing to do with every word in the book so the link is broken.

Right, your selection of the book has nothing to do with the will of a curious mind, because the curious mind is ignorant of the book's actual contents. The information that is presented to him is not of his will; the selection of the book is not defined by the will. It is defined by present knowledge, tastes, and motivations, things hardly relating to anyone's will.

 

[bobhikes]

Right, your selection of the book has nothing to do with the will of a curious mind, because the curious mind is ignorant of the book's actual contents. The information that is presented to him is not of his will; the selection of the book is not defined by the will. It is defined by present knowledge, tastes, and motivations, things hardly relating to anyone's will.

Lava could have been anything it was easy to spell and I was thinking of Hawaii.

I am confused by the above quote It seems to agree with me. How could I not have free will If I choose something that I am ignorant about that will shape my future choices. To not have free will everything has to be related to everything a chain of events. Once the chain is broken it stays broken. Knowledge, tastes and motivations are drivers of my actions and thereby my will.

 

[dust1n]

Lava could have been anything it was easy to spell and I was thinking of Hawaii.

I am confused by the above quote It seems to agree with me. How could I not have free will If I choose something that I am ignorant about that will shape my future choices. To not have free will everything has to be related to everything a chain of events. Once the chain is broken it stays broken. Knowledge, tastes and motivations are drivers of my actions and thereby my will.

Ok, I'll try to address the chain of events first.

Give me an example of a 'break' in the chain.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I'm guessing what dust is driving at here is if there was such a break in the chain there would still be a relationship with the break itself. Thus it nullifies any notion of breaking because there still remains an involvement with "breaking".

The analogy of lava here can be valid as well because of the chain still linked through indirect relationships remains intact albeit not in a direct sense.

If the butterfly effect is strictly logical and direct then I suppose one could argue there is a true break in that light and the chain therefore ends.

 

[bobhikes]

For me a chain is a hard substance connected by touching links that can not be seperated.

A man has many sensors on his body. He see's, feels, hears, smells and tastes millions of things not all these things does he consciencely remember but they effect him create a link to all around him.

Part of Knowledge is built on the actions surrounding these senses and results.

The other part of knowledge and how most of our knowledge is built is on the results of others that we have no actions or reactions with. For a part of time we choose to believe what is written or said. The words are the thing not the sense of seeing or hearing them. Words are not real but discriptions and have different meaning to different people. Two people can read the same book and get different meaning out of it and the author could have wrote it with a specifically other meaning. There is no link.

Nostrodomus writings for example are interpeted in many different ways to prove many different points. Yet all are supposedly linked views to drive the different peoples will and link all these people to a chain that goes back to his time and still effects the wills of people tomorrow.

To me this is like believing in a god who created everything in the world and still drives it to its destination. I can see where some people would choose to believe and others choose not to. I choose not to but that may be because I am being willed to not believe.

Knowledge for me is what gives us free will without it we are animals driven only by instinct without will.

 

[dust1n]

For me a chain is a hard substance connected by touching links that can not be seperated.

A man has many sensors on his body. He see's, feels, hears, smells and tastes millions of things not all these things does he consciencely remember but they effect him create a link to all around him.

Part of Knowledge is built on the actions surrounding these senses and results.

The other part of knowledge and how most of our knowledge is built is on the results of others that we have no actions or reactions with. For a part of time we choose to believe what is written or said. The words are the thing not the sense of seeing or hearing them. Words are not real but discriptions and have different meaning to different people. Two people can read the same book and get different meaning out of it and the author could have wrote it with a specifically other meaning. There is no link.

Nostrodomus writings for example are interpeted in many different ways to prove many different points. Yet all are supposedly linked views to drive the different peoples will and link all these people to a chain that goes back to his time and still effects the wills of people tomorrow.

To me this is like believing in a god who created everything in the world and still drives it to its destination. I can see where some people would choose to believe and others choose not to. I choose not to but that may be because I am being willed to not believe.

Knowledge for me is what gives us free will without it we are animals driven only by instinct without will.

Ok, I can agree with you to a certain extent. However, knowledge is derived because of the environment, which is uncontrollable (when it is, the true effects are unknowable), and the knowledge that is obtained from the environment is not a product of one's choice. The information simply makes it self presentable to that particular person, who, would notice that information within a set of circumstances regardless of will. Decisions based off knowledge used is based off the knowledge obtained, but the knowledge obtained is not an act of will, so the decision would be based solely on the knowledge. The decision could not be an act of will because it is solely based on the information available, which is also not a product of will.