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*cracks neck*

ok.. lol.

Humans have the grand notion of free will. What exactly is this? Informally it is a 'persons' - a sentient beings - ability to make a choice of our own accord without influence of nature, or a higher power. Formally.. the definition is..

1. The ability or discretion to choose; free choice: chose to remain behind of my own free will.
2. The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.

or from a strictly philosophical point of view it is..

2. Philosophy the belief that human behaviour is an expression of personal choice and is not determined by physical forces, Fate, or God.

This ability of free choice is opposed by many theories. Many of the other monist theories of mind , such as functionalism and behaviorism (J Levin, 2004) would begin to counteract this approach to the way we think, however they are far from infallible and as such a shadow has been cast over the entire argument.

The main argument against Free Will is that of Determinism. This is, basically what I would follow and believe.

It states that (and this is a very casual take on Determinism, so do not directly quote me..) we do not make choices, rather everything is cause and effect. Everything we choose to do, is not necessarily pre-determined, but is a reaction brought about by the physical characteristics of our current, and possible previous environments, attitudes and ideas built from memory that we use to clarify and categorise things in the physical world. I write this now.. because of thousands of possible reasons that will cause me to write it. I am awake at 5am, because I slept from 7:30pm until 12, like a fool, because I was tired because etc etc etc.. all obvious reasons, on top of these we can find the psychological and biological processes that further explain why I have ended up at this point.

Unfortunately this does lead us to an infinite regress (which is usually an argument ad absurdium and ergo ignored or frowned upon as a non solution to a problem, it is also by extension an argument for the existence of God in this case. Humans naturally presume everything has a beginning and an end, so what was the first uncaused cause.. However, here is something about the old IR - HERE. It may or may not interest you, I am yet to finish reading it.)

As you can see, if this is the case, then our choices are 'dictated' by the physical world and a great many other things.

Still though humans have come to the idea of free choice. I state it is an illusion, created by qualia during our cognitive processes and the fact that there are a great many explanations across any major discipline or through common sense as to why one may perform an action. SO because of our ignorance/inability to comprehend and the fear of disempowerment (but not these a lone) we have come to the conclusion of Free Will.

This is.... a very brief, casual and loose way of putting the argument, but let's see what you guys think anyway!

I want to hear religious views on it, but please.. leave the bible out and do not get cemented on the existence of God.

Very interesting Semper. I would very much have to lean towards determinism. I would like to post more of my thoughts, however it is getting to be late and I do have to get up early. So I will leave it to another moment when I may have more time.

ok well while i belive in part about determinisism it is for other reason to yours but i'll play the devils addvocate for a moment and talk about why we have free will


while your expliantion is a good one what about the times when we do things against our better judgment against our nature our up bringing ect when we do the thing that seemed least likely and completly contray to our personality when emotion is not a factor.

just because someones actions may be predictable dosen't mean they don't have a choice i could if i felt inclined (or even if i didn't) put my fist through the computer screen right now just because you predict i will chosse not too dosen't mean i don't have the choice .just because we generally take the easy or less burdensome paths doesn't mean we couldn't have taken the hard way and chosen by our own free will

Deaths_Rider wrote:just because someones actions may be predictable dosen't mean they don't have a choice i could if i felt inclined (or even if i didn't) put my fist through the computer screen right now just because you predict i will chosse not too dosen't mean i don't have the choice .just because we generally take the easy or less burdensome paths doesn't mean we couldn't have taken the hard way and chosen by our own free will

Ah ha... but it is an illusion of choice.. because you do not really have it. You see you would put your fist through that screen for any number of reasons, you could do it randomly to prove to me that you do have free will, in which case your action was determined by the context of our exchange.

On a further note you could well have done if because say you had just come out of a coma and desired the sensation of pain. Or you had gone insane and thought as yourself a robot, you needed to cut your hand, test your strength so you break the computer to this end...


Is choice.. the perception of options? The basic ability to be able to take those options (just flexibility? no?) Or is it.. the ability to take those options without any pre-determining factors dictating so?

There are different types of determinism, It wasn't very clear in your post but i take it you are taking the hard line and saying choice is an illusion. Even though the evidence you presented doesn't disprove the existence of free will. Your argument only shows that we are influenced by previous experience.

I don't think you really grapsed what death was saying.

i'll explain my take with an example.

when you fire a beam of light at a screen using double-slit apparatus it does not arrive at a single point, nor do the photons arrive in a scattered pattern like bullets fired by a fixed gun at a distant target.

The light arrives in different concentrations at separated points. The distribution of how the light will hit the screen can be calculated reliably. So in a sense, the behavior of light in this apparatus is deterministic, but there is no way to predict where an individual photon will make its contribution (scale predictable/ sequence not)

Newton was a cool guy but the principles he developed are in no way THE manual, to how the universe operates Semper. It's not all linear cause and effect, there are some very random elements in play in the universal theater that we are just starting to understand or have yet to discover.

Sorry if this doesn't make too much sense....about to go to bed, so this may be nonsense.....

It seems you're advocating a theory much akin (and probably a part of) biological reductionism - in the sense that all our actions, all our thought processes, everything we are and do, can essentially be reduced to biological/chemical processes that determine what we "choose". I have a major problem with this kind of reductionist thought - it fails to take into account complexity theory or ideas of emergence and chaos theory - events happen in the social world which cannot simply be reduced ad infinitum - social theory needs to take into account thermodynamic mathematics rather than Newtonian ideas of linear progression. Our biology influences us, for example if we have naturally high levels of testosterone, but that doesn't make us fight every person we see.

As for social interaction affecting our "choices" - of course society moulds us, shapes our decisions all the time. But they are decisions nonetheless. We decide which cognitive processes upon to act, which ones to ignore. Why do people act differently in a crowd? Because of levels of interaction; people act differently under certain social conditions, but the choice to do something isn't suddenly removed. If you don't believe in free will, if you think everything is decided by the natural and social contexts upon which they happen, does that remove blame on the person? Is it a valid defence to hit lots of people and then claim you have high levels of testosterone? Will it stand up in court to say that "my friends told me to do it"?

*Sorry if I went off on one and didn't relate to the topic at hand....I'm so tired*

Ok goody! An informal debate! excellent. Let me sleep on it chaps.. as I have been awake for over 40 hours, but I shall ruffle your feather tomorrow.

If god existed in the first place and was all powerful, all knowing and all loveing, then he would not have created "free will" in the first place, because free will causes great suffering, such as rape, child abuse, genocide, etc...surely an all powerful all knowing being would see this comeing and stop it by either not haveing free will or not createing humans in the first place.

Anyhow... sorry thats not quite on the topic of things, but free will is no evidence to the existance of a god. I just felt that needed to be said before we go any further...

Ah ha... but it is an illusion of choice.. because you do not really have it

The problem i have with that is, the arguement in itself is too easy to maintain, Any decision you make isnt your choice because thats how you ended up being conditioned. But then what if i someone did the opposite of what i was conditioned to do, Such as , for example, A soldier, when he is fired upon, is trained to take cover? What if he chooses to get in a chicken suit and dance the funky chicken. Would this break the laws of determinism? Or would this be something that was expected to happen. Its late and im not makeing my point very well... il re-evaluate in the morning.

while i agree that free will doesn't prove God exists i cant agree with your logic for it disproving a compsionate and powerfull God, knowing that pain will happen and not stoping it is not the same as inflicting the pain. but as you said this is best left for another topic.

as for the illusion of choice you say that (correct me if i've missunderstood) choice is the ability to chosse from all options without pre-determining factors, and i agree with you but i fell you have let wisdom get sucked into the idea of a pre-determing factor. yes our previous encounters shape those we have in the future but only because we are more wise more informed of the result of our choice.

if i had never know of electricity i may well grab a live wire i would get shocked and avoid doing so again if i was wise enough to learn the lesson the ability to aviod past mistakes or try and recreate past glorys is not an act of determisim but of our choosing the path with the outcome that we feel best suits us.

There is always the choice to do that which we know is painfull or wrong not doing so is a sign of wisdom not determinism.

Posting this at 10pm my time. I promise to come back and read the rest but for me, free will was made up by humans as they don't want to believe that they're being controlled by something else or another being. I guess I believe we have this fear that we can't control our own lives and the decisions regarding it. We don't want to feel like puppets on a string.

So that's my first thought on it.

your "something else or another being" line there intriges me care to elaborate on that at all

buck wrote:If god existed in the first place and was all powerful, all knowing and all loveing, then he would not have created "free will" in the first place, because free will causes great suffering, such as rape, child abuse, genocide, etc...surely an all powerful all knowing being would see this comeing and stop it by either not haveing free will or not createing humans in the first place.

Anyhow... sorry thats not quite on the topic of things, but free will is no evidence to the existance of a god. I just felt that needed to be said before we go any further...

Ah ha... but it is an illusion of choice.. because you do not really have it

The problem i have with that is, the arguement in itself is too easy to maintain, Any decision you make isnt your choice because thats how you ended up being conditioned. But then what if i someone did the opposite of what i was conditioned to do, Such as , for example, A soldier, when he is fired upon, is trained to take cover? What if he chooses to get in a chicken suit and dance the funky chicken. Would this break the laws of determinism? Or would this be something that was expected to happen. Its late and im not makeing my point very well... il re-evaluate in the morning.

And such is our understanding what we may judge divinity?Its not a question of mindless suffering but of our imperfection and with pain we can see our error,often inflected into our children(rape,child beating and so on)for this is a matter of psychological legacy.We would not learn anything if we would just be told,we need to see,to feel for ourselves...sorry but its very early hope it makes sense.

I'm waiting Semper!

Deaths_Rider wrote:your "something else or another being" line there intriges me care to elaborate on that at all

I know took me a while but now I'm on Spring Recess. I would like to describe exactly what I mean but I have no idea. I guess it refers mostly to what you believe. It might be God, might be fate. might be Allah. I remember someone telling me once that humans would like to believe that we alone control our fate, that there are no outside influences. But in the end we are influencd by those around us and the situation we find ourselves in and our past decisions.

yes our past influences us as do our surrounds but to say that they decide for us is just taking an easy way out. just like nilhism, it's the lazy mans answer if it doesn't matter or it's not your fault then you don't have to do anything as you have no control. LAZY

which is why i like it but dont belive it

unfortuantly we do have choice which means the consequnces are our fault not those of some(one/thing) else be they human or divine