does free will really exist?

[AuRoRa.C]

Hello guys , this is my first post here.. and excuse my English for it's not my mother tongue...

I know the free will vs.fate is an old controversial topic, just wanted to see your opinions out there..
I personally have always been in doubt if a person can do everything and that impossible is nothing... and that everything is in his own hands. It's true the person's character is his fate, but character is also affected by heredity, upbringing, and the general milieu of the person,, and where he lives. MY own dreams were not realized because of living in an underdeveloped country, where you can not do anything other than marrying and living just for living's sake. And now everything's crushed because Syria is bleeding... :(

[cafolini]

Of course there is free will. But it is choices you make within the reality you live. It means that you choose freely among the possibilities you manage to see and act upon. There is no absolute free will. There is mad free will on the part of people who want to act upon possibilities that only are and exist, but do not occur beyond the imagination. And as Einstein plainly said, knowledge is important but the imagination much more, because imagination without enough knowledge is like a toilet without water. Many people like to be constantly full of free will. Have fun.

[cacian]

Free Will and Fate or Faith?
That is three words.
Do they exist?
Yes separately.
You are free to think the way you want.
You have a will so that you can change your mind.
And you have faith or at least I think you should. If you don't then you can't exist and then you can take it back to Descarte.
He thought he did not exist and therefore he could not think faith will or free exist and therefore would not have any.

[Finns]

I believe that free will doesn't actually properly exist, considering my belief (and sciences belief) that our mind and our thoughts are completely physical and so are affected by its surroundings: thoughts don't just pop out of nowhere like they are free of the physical world and of something "higher". Everything that we ever come in contact with affects us and so our thoughts are a result of our environment and other factors. Of course, this could be disputed with issues such as the idea that maybe events don't have a chain-and-reaction effect if there is no beginnings (or is there? who knows). So really I don't know, but am more inclined to believe that, no, we don't have free will.

[Cioran]

What do you mean by free will? Libertarian free will? Compatibalist free will? Frankfurt free will?

What do you mean by determinism? Or fatalism? They are not the same.

What forms of determinism are you considering? Epistemic determinism? Logical determinism? Causal determinism? Relativistic determinism?

Like anything worthwhile, this has a huge literature, a lot of aspects and requires study.

[blazeofglory]

Free Will is our invention and in reality it is something we spin to justify some of our unjustifiable, unprovable nonsenses

[cacian]

What do you mean by free will? Libertarian free will? Compatibalist free will? Frankfurt free will?

What do you mean by determinism? Or fatalism? They are not the same.

What forms of determinism are you considering? Epistemic determinism? Logical determinism? Causal determinism? Relativistic determinism?

Like anything worthwhile, this has a huge literature, a lot of aspects and requires study.
How do you study free will?

[Rainyhawaii]

I do believe in free will. "The ability to act at one's own discretion." ~ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/free+will Yes, your environment affects you, as well as heredity and upbringing, but that's part of what gives you the necessary experiences to make decisions. If we didn't have any of these things we wouldn't have any experiences to base our actions, though, decisions, ect. on. These things are not an inhibitor of free will, rather, they are the creator of it.

[blazeofglory]

People are bound to behave in a certain way and it is not always in his capacity to behave the way he or like. We are too much with a particular religious dogma. When people become too poor his senses of morality liquidates and the reality he falls into solidifies and he becomes a helpless lot and behaves contrary to his will or any moral principles he was taught

[Phocion]

I believe that free will doesn't actually properly exist, considering my belief (and sciences belief) that our mind and our thoughts are completely physical and so are affected by its surroundings: thoughts don't just pop out of nowhere like they are free of the physical world and of something "higher". Everything that we ever come in contact with affects us and so our thoughts are a result of our environment and other factors. Of course, this could be disputed with issues such as the idea that maybe events don't have a chain-and-reaction effect if there is no beginnings (or is there? who knows). So really I don't know, but am more inclined to believe that, no, we don't have free will.
This is true, we make our decisions before we are consciously aware of them, so free will is evidently a bit of an illusion.

[Cioran]

How do you study free will?

There is a huge literature on it dating back a couple of thousands years. You could read it.

There is fatalism. There is determinism. There is Aristotle's Sea Battle argument. There is libertarian free will. There is compatiblist free will. There is Frankfurtian free will. We have arguments to causal, logical, epistemic and relativistic determinism. We have the Libett (sp?) experiments of the 1980s that gave the first empirical demonstration that free will may be limited if it exists at all. And so on.

Get reading! :smash:

[Redzeppelin]

If free will does not exist, then truth cannot exist. If we do not freely choose our words/thoughts and they are merely the by-products of psychological/biological/chemical/sociological forces, then the things we say were not of our choosing - and those words/thoughts were merely "fed" to us by our influences. That means that every post here isn't really our opinions per se but rather our responses to these influencing factors. How can truth come out of those mindless influences?

[Ser Nevarc]

If free will does not exist, then truth cannot exist. If we do not freely choose our words/thoughts and they are merely the by-products of psychological/biological/chemical/sociological forces, then the things we say were not of our choosing - and those words/thoughts were merely "fed" to us by our influences. That means that every post here isn't really our opinions per se but rather our responses to these influencing factors. How can truth come out of those mindless influences?

Yea you're picking up on the major issue. That's why, despite that fact that empirically we're fairly sure free will is an illusion, it is not held as fact by large groups of people. It is tramped out by the fear of the inevitable consequences--that personal responsibility, perhaps, ceases to exist?

But I'm not sure what you mean by "truth" not existing. Can you clarify or expand on that?

[cacian]

There is a huge literature on it dating back a couple of thousands years. You could read it.

There is fatalism. There is determinism. There is Aristotle's Sea Battle argument. There is libertarian free will. There is compatiblist free will. There is Frankfurtian free will. We have arguments to causal, logical, epistemic and relativistic determinism. We have the Libett (sp?) experiments of the 1980s that gave the first empirical demonstration that free will may be limited if it exists at all. And so on.

Get reading! :smash:
Wow a revolutionary thesis on free will is in order.

[ladderandbucket]

Most of what I've read on free will seems more interested in defining the term than explaining the common, non-philosophical understanding of it which I would say is that of libertarian free will.

I have never seen any good argument for libertarian free will, at least not one which doesn't rely on some hypothetical unknown. Sure, we might have freedom, if transcendental idealism is true and our motives originate in the noumenon..or maybe there is some quantum occurrence at some place in our brains...who knows? But I don't see why it is necessary to invent these possibilities. People will say 'I know I have free will..I can feel it'. But what would it feel like if you didn't have free will? How would it feel different? Determinism doesn't mean that we don't have to make choices (unfortunately, perhaps). It's just that the choices we make are the ones we would have made anyway. Determinism is not the same as fatalism. Only an omniscient god can afford to be a fatalist.

Most scientifically informed philosophers seem to accept determinism even if they won't admit it. The question they seem to be asking is to what extent determinism absolves us from responsibility. I think it comes down to how you define the 'self'. As Daniel Dennett has said - if you make yourself really small you can externalise just about everything. Of course this also means that you can make yourself really large and take responsibility for your unconscious, your genes..whatever you want. The idea of 'self' is a convenient fiction. This is not a controversial idea. As with free will, anybody wanting to pin down exactly what a 'self' is has to invoke some kind of mystery.

[Cioran]

Most scientifically informed philosophers seem to accept determinism even if they won't admit it.

Determinism is false if wave-function-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics are true. In that case the world is not deterministic. It is indeterminstic. However, if it is indeterministic, free will fares no better.

OTOH, causal determinism does not impeach free will if one embraces a neo-Humean perspective on cause and effect. You can Google the writings of Norman Swartz for more about this.


Wow a revolutionary thesis on free will is in order.

I see. So you want license to blather on about something you've never studied, with a pedigree of about 2,000 years, and sneer at those who have studied it.

Nice.

[Raaksha]

I think the real question to ask is - does it *matter* if free will exists?

I think we do have a degree of free will - in that, we get to make a personal mental choice, of whether to do this or that, or be this or that (regardless of the influencing factors around us). But does it matter in the end? The universe has its own pattern of function separate from ours - so you can will yourself to prepare for university in a year, but you might get run over by a truck this evening. I think we give human free will too much importance. What happens, happens, and we do what we can, but the bottom line is that your will is inconsequential to the randomness of events that is life. Doesn't mean that you should just lie down and let the tide take you where it pleases, but it doesn't mean you can control the tide either.

[ladderandbucket]

OTOH, causal determinism does not impeach free will if one embraces a neo-Humean perspective on cause and effect. You can Google the writings of Norman Swartz for more about this.

Thanks for the recommendation. Been reading Swartz's website today and I'm hooked.

[kev67]

I read a book by Roger Penrose who is a professor of mathematics at Oxford University. He worked with Stephen Hawkings on black holes back in the 60s, so presumably a pretty clever guy. Basically he argued the brain was not like a computer, but sticking his neck out, he suspected its workings would be partially explained by the yet unknown theory of quantum gravity. That suggests that a person's decisions are not entirely determinate.

[Varenne Rodin]

We have free will to an extent. I couldn't prevent being born, pity, and I can't prevent my death. No amount of my will can overcome the life cycle.

[ennison]

It exists to the extent that we live our lives as if it exists. We could not live lives otherwise. Personally I couldn't care less but at base I am a predestinationist. Believing that, however, has little or no effect on my day-to-day life of making (or seeming to make ) choices. Making a choice isn't such a marvellous thing- a dog does it. I have to live with my conscience which thanks to the Reverend Maclennan (ex-tank driver with a plate in his head from a Hun shell) has been generally awake if not always sparklingly so. Even on a Trotskyist vision of life there are choices and paths. It should be even more obvious to the most determinedly Calvinist/Augustinian predestinationist that the reference to the narrow road and the broad road in the NT mean we have to exercise the human faculty of making a decision - even if in the Greater Scheme of Things there is less choice than we think.
I 'm sure the above will bemuse amuse and irritate some . Thank God we don't have to walk, talk and think alike (yet).

[cacian]

Determinism is false if wave-function-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics are true. In that case the world is not deterministic. It is indeterminstic. However, if it is indeterministic, free will fares no better.

OTOH, causal determinism does not impeach free will if one embraces a neo-Humean perspective on cause and effect. You can Google the writings of Norman Swartz for more about this.



I see. So you want license to blather on about something you've never studied, with a pedigree of about 2,000 years, and sneer at those who have studied it.

Nice.

Cioran this is what I think. There is a will within us. Free or not is not the point.

[Eiseabhal]

I like your comment Ennison. Bliadhna Mhath ur dhuit nuair a thigeas i.

[Jaybsp]

We're free but only at the price of death, when I drink and eat it's because my body is telling me so, if I exercise my free will to overcome my hunger I will die eventually. Also, I didn't choose to be born or when I will, unless I commit suicide.