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Free Will / Determinism
How can Free Will exist?

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Free Will / Determinism

Zukros
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Posted 10/28/09 - 06:49 AM: Subject: Free Will / Determinism	#1
Okay. I'm new to philosophy as a whole, so don't come down on me too harshly. However, lately I have been wondering increasingly how the concept of Free Will can be sustained without belief in the Supernatural. As someone growing up in a family of scientists, it is all too easy to look around and find a cause for everything - every thought, belief or ideal can be ultimately attributed to genetic or environmental factors. As we research more and more into the way the brain works, it becomes painfully obvious that the way we think and act is not due to some inner 'soul' or free will, but as a result of determinism and prior factors affecting our decisions. And if this is the case - and I cannot find any proof that this is not the case - then how can Free Will exist? If everything is ultimately due to a long train of consequences and chances (or not as such, if we take the theory of parallel universes as fact), then what 'freedom' do we have? Thanks, Alex

Belgarath
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Posted 10/28/09 - 08:39 AM:	#2
My first question to you is how you see a connection between "free will" and the "supernatural." I do not see any connection between the two that is truly significant. Also what do you determine free will is. Is it thought? Choice? You seem to not supply any definate term or suggestion for it. I personally believe in free will, and to me free will is the ability to choose your own destiny, to make your own decisions. Not someone else doing it, no divine being, or parallel hive-mind thing going on. It is you who decides. This is all I will write for now and will let you and other people work from it or away from it... and I will continue after.

Odin
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Posted 10/28/09 - 10:27 AM:	#3
If you think of free will as the choice to determine the character that ultimately makes your decisions, you have very little free will, albeit some. I don't see why people want to view it this way, since it is contradictory to want to "choose" your character without having a character to lead your decision. If you think about it more simply, "will" is a state of consciousness able to discern and choose between alternatives and potentiall act on them. A "free will" just means that your own character is linked to your own desires and actions. Yes, who we are is largely determined, I just don't see how that's all that relevant.

Zukros
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Posted 10/28/09 - 01:44 PM:	#4
Belgarath; I meant that if everything can be explained without free will, and evidence suggests that everything is just a train of consequences, then a belief in Free Will is similar to that in the Supernatural: unsubstantiated and only up for discussion based on feeble evidence. the actual sentence made sense at the time of writing. It makes less sense ot me now, anyway. I'd define Free Will as there being a 'you' that has a choice in your own decisions and able to carve your own path in life. I'm arguing that there being reasons for every decision that could ahve led to it, genetic as well as environmental, there is no evidence for any 'you', let alone a freedom of choice. Odin; Exactly my reasoning. However, there are people who do view free will as something in existance, and I was wondering if there is any proof or reason to justify it at all?

mway
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Posted 10/28/09 - 02:44 PM:	#5
Zukros you are more or less correct. The common view of "free will", is the ability to have freely made a choice, when in fact, a determined world only allows one choice to be made (despite the feeling of choosing). If only one choice can be made, then it really isn't choosing at all. Quantum mechanics usually comes in to play at this point in the argument, however it simply outlines that certain events are not determined, but are instead random. This leaves the universe with three possible states. Determined, random, or a mixture of the two. All of these states do not accomodate free will. As many posters have said before, this argument lies significantly on the definition of the term, and personally I find it a concept that is highly irrational. To get to the bottom of it, simply ask a proponent of free will, what the mechanisms behind choice are.
Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality.

Arkady
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Posted 10/28/09 - 03:20 PM:	#6
Zukros wrote: Okay. I'm new to philosophy as a whole, so don't come down on me too harshly. However, lately I have been wondering increasingly how the concept of Free Will can be sustained without belief in the Supernatural. As someone growing up in a family of scientists, it is all too easy to look around and find a cause for everything - every thought, belief or ideal can be ultimately attributed to genetic or environmental factors. As we research more and more into the way the brain works, it becomes painfully obvious that the way we think and act is not due to some inner 'soul' or free will, but as a result of determinism and prior factors affecting our decisions. And if this is the case - and I cannot find any proof that this is not the case - then how can Free Will exist? If everything is ultimately due to a long train of consequences and chances (or not as such, if we take the theory of parallel universes as fact), then what 'freedom' do we have? Thanks, Alex Alex, I presume by "supernatural" you are here referring to some sort of Cartesian dualism (i.e. the mind as an immaterial essence separate from the matter comprising the brain)?
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley

Advinar
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Posted 10/28/09 - 03:53 PM:	#7
Firstly, a definition of what I would call free will: The ability to choose and create individually without outside influence. The definition may not be perfect but I'm sure everybody gets what I'm trying to say. Studies have shown that our behaviour is determined by a combination of factors, including biological reasons, and the experiences from which we have learned. Now, these broad concepts are the two huge things that have an effect on our behaviour. We are unable to control what experiences we are subjected to, and even the experiences we choose to undertake are predetermined by previous experiences. We are not able to control the bodies in which we are born and so there is also no free will in the biology department of our lives. Therefore, I believe that if these are the things that build our personalities and behaviour, and we have no control over them, then we do not really have free will. ------------------------------ On a side note to do with the quantum physics thing, human free will cannot be compared with the behaviour of electrons. Electrons and such behave oddly on a small scale in a 'random' manner. Humans, however, are not electrons. Unlike humans, electrons and such are free to be 'random' due to the relatively small influences effecting their behaviour. Humans though have been formed in such a manner that they do not fit under the category 'random' as we have been so heavily indoctrinated by everything.

Odin
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Posted 10/28/09 - 06:57 PM:	#8
Advinar: a couple points I have. You view your experiences as determining your character. What if it is completely the opposite? What if I give meaning to my experiences and therefore it is not without outside influence? Secondly, why do you think free will has to be free of outside influence? Third, you say you don't get to choose your experiences. Not until there is actually a "you" to choose anything. If who 'you' are is created by your formative experiences, then I would say that free will can't exist at all without that condition. It is also illogical to conclude that determinism strips me of responsibility for my actions (the reasoning being that since I can't control them I am not responsible for what they make me do). The fact that my actions have consequences and that I have to live with the reality of those consequences is my responsibility.

Cuthbert
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Posted 10/29/09 - 02:27 AM:	#9
If everything is ultimately due to a long train of consequences and chances (or not as such, if we take the theory of parallel universes as fact), then what 'freedom' do we have? One standard answer is that we are free when we do what we want. Sometimes we do what we want. It can also be true that what we want and what we do is due to a long train of cause and effect. So it can be true both that we are free and that we are causally determined. As someone growing up in a family of scientists, it is all too easy to look around and find a cause for everything - every thought, belief or ideal can be ultimately attributed to genetic or environmental factors. On the contrary, honest scientists will tell you how difficult it is to find causes of many things. If it were not, there would be no need for science, because we would already know the causes of everything. I don't think that scientists will be able to tell you whether everything has a cause or whether there are some events that lack a cause. To do that they would have to enumerate the cause of every event (which is a colossal and therefore impossible task) or they would have to show in the case of some event that no other event was its cause (likewise colossal and impossible). 'Every event has a cause' isn't a proposition that's susceptible to scientific investigation. It's an assumption that is useful to prevent scientific incuriosity and laziness.

Klas Wullt
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Posted 10/29/09 - 10:15 AM: Subject: nihilism	#10
Deteriminism is nihilistic. Free will is existentialism. Existentialism is also nihilistic. But determinism is more evidently nihilistic. Most human beings wants to deny the truth of nihilism so they prefere free will but would not accept the truth of them being existentialists becouse if they did they have but one step left to accept that they are back where they started. If there are no free will then no human being can be responsible for breaking the law. Neither more nor less criminals would make the choice to commit more nor less crimes due to their misplaced existential personal morality. Becouse humans wants to deny that criminals are natural they project their own denial by thinking the criminals have choice and that it is their bad choice. Determinism suggests there is no soul and no self control becouse no matter how intelligent our thoughts are they are as input-out-put dependend and input-out determinable as the body as an machine. Free will let people believe that if they think then they have done something they otherwise wouldn't do and thus they can ignore the nihilism of their reality. Which basically is the same as "if I don't know something then it does not exist". Humanity attempt separates bad sentience from good sentience and weakens itself. The big problem few realise is that free will is just as nihilistic. Free will makes mankind random and chaotic. No matter what we do or how we think the situation does not change. It's way better to accept the truth and give in. If we accept reality then its no longer bad. There is nothing to worry about.

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