Free will?

[PeterL]

I would suggest that there are infinite “causes” for our actions. It seems to me that yours is a modernist (scientific) worldview. Modernism is typified by some basic principles: 1) the “whole” is made up of and explained by its parts (a postmodern view would be that the whole can be more than its parts). 2) Language is referential (as opposed to gaining meaning through social usage in context). 3) Faith in the ‘real’, which exists distinctly from language, symbols and models (as opposed to the notion that reality is ALWAYS mediated through language, models and symbols.

We agree on this there appear to be infinite causes. I would contend that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts determine what the whole is or can be; you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I think of myself as more of a Pretermodernist than a Modernist, but the differences are few.

It’s perfectly reasonable to say that if someone murders someone, he “causes” that person’s death, whether or not his behavior could in some future society be predicted by scientists as the inevitable result of the Big Bang. Humans do exist because we evolved from other animals – but I also exist because my father met my mother and they got married and decided to have sex at one particular time. One “cause” does not negate the other, just as the laws of physics do not negate free will. Was the fact that my mother and father both ended up (through a million happenstances) working for the same company, and thus met and got married inevitable ever since the beginning of the universe? I have no strong opinion about that one way or another. Nonetheless, even if it was, I don’t think it’s incorrect to say, “My mom and dad met BECAUSE they happened to get jobs at the same company.”

Determining a complete set of actual causes is probably impossible, because some of the causes in the chain of cause and effect took place long before there were observers.

Since this is a literary board, I refer you to War and Peace. Here’s Tolstoy’s take (he favors a non-individual, but also non-reductionist approach to causation in history, but may be taking your side in the argument more than mine):



Here’s a link to the rest of the chapter:
http://www.online-literature.com/tol...and_peace/168/


Yes – acts appear to us as acts of will. Yes, they may be “predestined from eternity”. That makes them “in an historical sense involuntary”, or in a scientific sense involuntary, but only in those particular senses from that particular and unique perspective.

p.s. I don't know enough about quantum mechanics to get involved in that conversation, interesting as it seems.

In practical terms it doesn't make any difference whether there is free will, because human society, including legal systems, is based on the assumption that humans can control their actions. Proving that everything is determined will overthrow laws, morals, and commerce.

I am going to look into quantum uncertainty. As I mentioned earlier, I don't think that there has been much work on the prediction of a single atom's decay.

[YesNo]

It’s perfectly reasonable to say that if someone murders someone, he “causes” that person’s death, whether or not his behavior could in some future society be predicted by scientists as the inevitable result of the Big Bang.

No scientist will be able to make such a prediction in the future unless the current laws of physics are proven false.

Humans do exist because we evolved from other animals – but I also exist because my father met my mother and they got married and decided to have sex at one particular time. One “cause” does not negate the other, just as the laws of physics do not negate free will.

If the laws of physics implied materialistic determinism, that would negate free will. Fortunately, the laws of physics show the opposite regardless of the speculations of some physicists.

Was the fact that my mother and father both ended up (through a million happenstances) working for the same company, and thus met and got married inevitable ever since the beginning of the universe? I have no strong opinion about that one way or another. Nonetheless, even if it was, I don’t think it’s incorrect to say, “My mom and dad met BECAUSE they happened to get jobs at the same company.”

There is a summary called The Chemistry Between Us which describes the molecules that support desire in our brains giving us pleasure when we have sex and give us social memory to make our species monogamous. These are all reward mechanisms that encourage sexual activity. Your parents got together within a biological environment that contained chemical reward mechanisms encouraging them to mate.

Now if they had no free will to choose not to mate, why would these reward mechanisms exist? They wouldn't be necessary. What this implies is not only do we have free will to reject pleasure, but so do all the species in which chemical reward mechanisms are used to bias their choices one way or the other.

Yes – acts appear to us as acts of will. Yes, they may be “predestined from eternity”. That makes them “in an historical sense involuntary”, or in a scientific sense involuntary, but only in those particular senses from that particular and unique perspective.

Think about it from any reasonable God's perspective. Why would he or she want to predestine every facet of any species behavior? Where's the fun in that?

Sure the God would want to fine-tune the universe so life could exist, and the one we live in appears to be nicely tuned for our existence, but there must be some room for free will or why would that God bother at all with it?

[Ecurb]

I disagree that materialistic determinism negates free will (although I’ll grant that yours is the majority position), and I’ve just written an almost endless series of posts on the subject, so I won’t repeat myself.

As far as God is concerned, the Protestant Christian argument is about whether an omniscient God is logically compatible with free will, particularly with regard to Salvation. An omniscient God would clearly know what will happen in the future, and who is saved and who is damned. Therefore, it follows that each individual’s salvation is already determined (from God’s perspective), because He knows what it will be.

Again, whether this entirely negates free will is a debatable (I would argue that it doesn’t, you, from your comment about materialistic determinism, would argue that it does). In addition, there are complicated Theological arguments (based on the Bible) about whether humans can find their own salvation (through faith), or whether faith is God’s gift to them, and entirely determined by Him (but I can’t remember the arguments well enough to repeat them here without some research).

One more question: If chemicals in our brains are designed “to make our species monogamous”, how come we aren’t monogamous? These chemicals aren’t doing their job!

[PeterL]

No scientist will be able to make such a prediction in the future unless the current laws of physics are proven false.



If the laws of physics implied materialistic determinism, that would negate free will. Fortunately, the laws of physics show the opposite regardless of the speculations of some physicists.



There is a summary called The Chemistry Between Us which describes the molecules that support desire in our brains giving us pleasure when we have sex and give us social memory to make our species monogamous. These are all reward mechanisms that encourage sexual activity. Your parents got together within a biological environment that contained chemical reward mechanisms encouraging them to mate.

Now if they had no free will to choose not to mate, why would these reward mechanisms exist? They wouldn't be necessary. What this implies is not only do we have free will to reject pleasure, but so do all the species in which chemical reward mechanisms are used to bias their choices one way or the other.

The matter of reward for reproduction is fair, but the reward is just a small part of the whole process.

[/QUOTE]Think about it from any reasonable God's perspective. Why would he or she want to predestine every facet of any species behavior? Where's the fun in that?

Sure the God would want to fine-tune the universe so life could exist, and the one we live in appears to be nicely tuned for our existence, but there must be some room for free will or why would that God bother at all with it?[/QUOTE]

For the most part the Gods and Goddesses do not know what will happen, and even Sky Father doesn't bother to consider the chain of cause and effect. By giving things wide latitude and a diversity of different stimuli, more different things were developed than he would have thought of without really trying. I expect that things will be better the next time around.

On the other hand, I still am an agnostic about determinism.

[YesNo]

For the most part the Gods and Goddesses do not know what will happen, and even Sky Father doesn't bother to consider the chain of cause and effect. By giving things wide latitude and a diversity of different stimuli, more different things were developed than he would have thought of without really trying. I expect that things will be better the next time around.

On the other hand, I still am an agnostic about determinism.

I mention the Gods for Ecurb whom I suspect might accept them. I actually do although I don't have any particular relationship to one. The point is that no matter how powerful the God or how advanced the physicist in the future, if quantum mechanics is true and contains Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, no initial state can be constructed by either of them.

However, the more interesting part about free will is not at the quantum level. That just allows the physical possibility in this universe for free will to occur.

Sam Harris' essay "Free Will" sets the stage for the problem of consciousness. This is from page 8:

The physiologist Benjamin Libet famously used EEG to show that activity in the brain's motor cortex can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Another lab extended this work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subjects were asked to press one of two buttons while watching a "clock" composed of random sequence of letters appearing on a screen. They reported which letter was visible at the moment they decided to press one button or the other. The experimenters found two brain regions that contained information about which button subjects would press a full 7 to 10 seconds before the decision was consciously made.

Because the conscious awareness occurred after the brain activity, Harris denies that we have free will defined as our conscious awareness being the only source of our free will.

Daniel Dennett disagrees with him claiming, according to Harris, "that even if our thoughts and actions are the product of unconscious causes, they are still our thoughts and actions."

I'll let that sink in.

It is here that we are confronted with what consciousness actually is. Like out-of-body experiences these particular experiments confirm, as I understand it, what intuitionists or psychics also say about consciousness.

[Cioran]

I disagree that materialistic determinism negates free will (although I’ll grant that yours is the majority position), and I’ve just written an almost endless series of posts on the subject, so I won’t repeat myself.

As far as God is concerned, the Protestant Christian argument is about whether an omniscient God is logically compatible with free will, particularly with regard to Salvation. An omniscient God would clearly know what will happen in the future, and who is saved and who is damned. Therefore, it follows that each individual’s salvation is already determined (from God’s perspective), because He knows what it will be.

Again, whether this entirely negates free will is a debatable (I would argue that it doesn’t, you, from your comment about materialistic determinism, would argue that it does).

If by hypothesis there existed an omniscient agent, defined as an agent who has complete true knowledge of all future contingent acts and events, this foreknowledge would not negate human free will. This idea of free-will negation in the presence of infallible foreknowledge represents an instance of an actual logical fallacy, known as the Modal Fallacy.

Suffice it for now to say that if this kind of God existed, then the free acts of future beings would supply the truth grounds of his prior knowledge of what those people contingently would do. The argument to what is sometimes called epistemic determinism gets the flow of truth-making backward: it supposes that God's foreknowledge of what people will do forces what they will do, but it is rather the opposite: the free acts force God's foreknowledge to be what it is.

[osho]

Free will invented by the Christendom in the middle age is just to,widen its domain since unlike any other ancient religions Christianity suffers great limitations and like Hinduism and Buddhism there is no system of meditations and that is why to widen its scope many scholars and pundits kept on adding something. Man is free to do certain things which is a childish proposition but beyond a certain limit. For instance when a person is too compressed or hard struct he becomes compelled to do things which he would have not done otherwise in a normal circumstance. Therefore the assumption that man is a accountable for every piece of act irrespective of the external circumstances is a stupid idea. The idea that he must face the punishment in this life or in the afterlife for the acts he has done is again trash.

Life is full of circumstances and these circumstances do not change though he change himself and he has to give in to these externals and that is why he has to obey things or the turn of the event in adverse environments.

[YesNo]

I disagree that materialistic determinism negates free will (although I’ll grant that yours is the majority position), and I’ve just written an almost endless series of posts on the subject, so I won’t repeat myself.

I might be wrong. That's why I'm interested in this thread.

As far as God is concerned, the Protestant Christian argument is about whether an omniscient God is logically compatible with free will, particularly with regard to Salvation. An omniscient God would clearly know what will happen in the future, and who is saved and who is damned. Therefore, it follows that each individual’s salvation is already determined (from God’s perspective), because He knows what it will be.

I assume that an omniscient God only knows what is true. For example, no matter how omniscient, that God doesn't know something to be true that is false. The initial state, or any particular state of the universe from which one could predict from it all past and future states, does not exist. It should not impair the omniscience of a God to not know something to exist that in fact doesn't exist.

Again, whether this entirely negates free will is a debatable (I would argue that it doesn’t, you, from your comment about materialistic determinism, would argue that it does). In addition, there are complicated Theological arguments (based on the Bible) about whether humans can find their own salvation (through faith), or whether faith is God’s gift to them, and entirely determined by Him (but I can’t remember the arguments well enough to repeat them here without some research).

From what I've been reading on Bhakti yoga in Hinduism, karma, or cause and effect determinism, can be overcome by individuals, that is, they "find their own salvation", or it comes from surrender to Vishnu (most likely through love of his avatar Krishna) which corresponds to "faith". The same thing you are describing in Christianity seems to be present in Hinduism.

One more question: If chemicals in our brains are designed “to make our species monogamous”, how come we aren’t monogamous? These chemicals aren’t doing their job!

Right. They don't do their job very well. All the chemicals do is provide a reward mechanism that would bias us to do one thing or the other. The existence of these reward mechanisms I see as evidence that we have free will. We just need to clarify what that is.

[Ecurb]

Cioran gave a formal explanation of the argument for the existence of free will given an omniscient God (who knows what "choice" we will make). My question to Cioran is this: suppose we have materialistic determinism. Scientists can predict what choice people will make, and they theorize that their correct predictions are based on their knowledge of causation. Does that negate free will?

Also, the (posited) omniscient God is a bit more complicated than your explanation suggests. Since the omniscient God is also the creator of the universe, and since He knew when he created the universe (being outside of time) all eventualities that would take place in that universe, He is (arguably) the "cause" of those occurences as well as the mere predicter. To what extent does this have an impact on which is contingent upon what?

[Cioran]

Cioran gave a formal explanation of the argument for the existence of free will given an omniscient God (who knows what "choice" we will make). My question to Cioran is this: suppose we have materialistic determinism. Scientists can predict what choice people will make, and they theorize that their correct predictions are based on their knowledge of causation. Does that negate free will?

Also, the (posited) omniscient God is a bit more complicated than your explanation suggests. Since the omniscient God is also the creator of the universe, and since He knew when he created the universe (being outside of time) all eventualities that would take place in that universe, He is (arguably) the "cause" of those occurences as well as the mere predicter. To what extent does this have an impact on which is contingent upon what?

I believe I made this point earlier about God's alleged omnipotence, in conjunction with the fact that he allegedly created the universe, posing the real threat to free will. But put that aside for a moment just to focus on this narrow issue of omniscience vs. free will.

The issue of omniscience v. free will can be abstracted out, and indeed it first raised its head before the invention of the Abrahamic God. It is called the Problem of Future Contingents, and was first mooted by Aristotle in his Sea Battle example.

The question is, can propositions be true today, about events that will occur in the future? And if so, what are the implications of that?

We take as a staring premise that "truth" inheres in propositions. This is called the correspondence theory of truth. Not everyone accepts it.

"Tomorrow there will be a sea battle."

If tomorrow there is a sea battle, the proposition is true, in advance of the event. If there is no sea battle, the proposition is false.

Aristotle worried that if propositions today can be true (or false) about events in the future, then fatalism ensues. Fatalism is not really the same thing as determinism, but basically it means that the universe is pre-set and it is idle to try to change the future. This is also called the Idle Argument.

This form of fatalism, or determinism, is sometimes called logical fatalism/determinism.

The argument takes the following logical form (which can be reduced to formal symbolic logic, but I'll skip that): If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then necessarily there will be a sea battle tomorrow.

In modal logic, there are formal distinctions between necessity and contingency, possibility and actuality. The bottom line is that if a proposition is necessarily true, it cannot fail to hold in all possible circumstances. Thus if the construction outlined above is right, tomorrow's sea battle is not, as had been supposed, a contingent state of affairs. Contingency means it could have been otherwise. If it's not contingent, it's necessary. If it's necessary, it can't fail to happen. If it can't fail to happen, there is no free will and indeed no contingent acts or events exist at all, and all human action (and every other event) is preset.

Aristotle's solution was to deny that propositions today, about events in the future, can be truth-valued (either true or false). Aristotle was wrong.

If I say, "tomorrow it will rain," and it in fact rains, then I spoke truly. My proposition "tomorrow it will rain," was indeed truth-valued, returning the value TRUE, and it was true in advance of the event that it describes. Does this, however, mean what Aristotle feared --- that if it's true today that tomorrow it will rain (or that there will be a sea battle), then the rain and the sea battle must necessarily happen?

No.

The error in this way of thinking was laid bare by the invention of modal logic in the 20th century, to which of course Aristotle had no access.

Skipping over the details to make this post wieldy, the problem lies with the misapplication of the term necessarily in the equation, "If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then necessarily there will be a sea battle tomorrow." In formal modal symbolic logic, the word "necessity" is called an operator, which acts on operands. The above equation can be divided into the antecedent ("If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle…") and the consequent ("… then necessarily there will be a sea battle tomorrow.")

Since true propositions cannot also be false (Law of Non-Contradiction) then if it's true today that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then sure enough, there will be a sea battle tomorrow.

The problem lies in ascribing necessity to the sea battle. It's not necessary; it is, was, and always will be, contingent. This is called the principle of the fixity of modal status. The modal status of a proposition cannot change. If a truth is necessary, it is, was, and always will be, necessary; and likewise if it is contingent, it is, was, and always will be, contingent.

Again, I'm going to skip over the details, but compare the following propositions:

1. If today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then tomorrow, necessarily, there will be a sea battle.

2. Necessarily, (if today it is true that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then tomorrow there will (NOT MUST!) be a sea battle.

Proposition One above is logically fallacious and Prop 2 is logically correct.

The upshot: in cases like this, necessity cannot be ascribed to the consequent of the antecedent by itself. It must be ascribed jointly to BOTH antecedent and consequent. To ascribe necessity only to the consequent constitutes the formal "modal fallacy." What it means is that necessarily, a true proposition about future events cannot fail to be true, but the event itself can go either way. If there is a sea battle, then the existence of that battle confers truth on the proposition describing it. But there could just as well NOT be a sea battle, in which case the proposition, "Today it's true that tomorrow there will NOT be a sea battle" is true instead.

This reduces to: necessarily, true propositions are true by definition. But the EVENTS that the propositions describe can go either way (free will intact); it's just that whatever way the events go, the proposition will correctly describe those events, even in advance of their occurrence.

I invite you to figure out what this means for God's alleged omniscience and human free will. You may already notice that the so-called problem for free will of God's foreknowledge all human acts is just a specialized subset of Aristotle's Problem of Future Contingents. And as just shown, there is actually no problem. If God knows today that tomorrow there will be a sea battle, then sure enough, there will be; but it does not have to happen. The battle is not NECESSARY. What IS necessary, is that whether people decide freely to have a sea battle or not, God will know, in advance, what free choice they make. It's not that the sea battle MUST happen. It's just that whether it happens or not, it MUST be the case that God knows in advance what will happen.

For a fuller treatment, I highly recommend this essay at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Foreknolwedge and Free Will

I'll talk about materialistic determinism, also called causal determinism, later. Causal determinism does not impugn free will, either.

[Ecurb]

All of this makes perfect sense to me. It’s similar to my earlier stated argument that if Bill put on his hat yesterday, it is still reasonable to say, “Bill FREELY CHOSE to put on his hat yesterday.” Despite the fact that Bill can no longer make any other choice, his action is compatible with free will. The only distinction is that we (perhaps arbitrarily) distinguish between past events and future events, so IT SEEMS TO US that if someone has knowledge of the future event it would violate free will, while if we have knowledge of past events it does not.

I read the article you linked (although I skimmed the parts with symbols, and merely read the English). Very interesting and well done (certainly the article explained the argument better than I did. I also read the article on Free Will. Here’s what it says about “causal determinism” (in part):

Most philosophers agree that whether or not determinism is true is a contingent matter; that is, determinism is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. If this is so, then whether or not determinism is true becomes an empirical matter, to be discovered by investigating the way the world is, not through philosophical argumentation…. Some scientists suggest that certain parts of physics give us reason to doubt the truth of determinism. For example, the standard interpretation of Quantum Theory, the Copenhagen Interpretation, holds that the laws governing nature are indeterministic and probabilistic.

[Cioran]

All of this makes perfect sense to me. It’s similar to my earlier stated argument that if Bill put on his hat yesterday, it is still reasonable to say, “Bill FREELY CHOSE to put on his hat yesterday.” Despite the fact that Bill can no longer make any other choice, his action is compatible with free will. The only distinction is that we (perhaps arbitrarily) distinguish between past events and future events, so IT SEEMS TO US that if someone has knowledge of the future event it would violate free will, while if we have knowledge of past events it does not.

That's exactly it. God, with his perfect knowledge, would also have a perfect memory. Suppose he remembers that 2,000 years ago, some guy x killed some guy y at a brawl in ancient Rome. If you were to ask, does this perfect memory of God's mean that x HAD TO kill y, and could not have done otherwise, what would most people answer? Most would answer, correctly, NO. x could have refrained from killing y; but had he done so, then God, with his perfect memory, would remember THAT fact instead.

So it goes in other time direction, foreknowledge. This demonstration does not prove that people have free will. Maybe we are all pre-pgrammed robots. It just proves that perfect foreknowledge BY ITSELF, or anything involving epistemology (knowledge) cannot undermine freedom of will or choice.

[YALASH]

I was wondering, and I don't want any fights, what the religious view of "cause and effect" versus "free will" is. .

In the first chapter of Holy Quran, four basic attributes of God are mentioned. Al Rab (The One, Who upbrings, raises, Lord), Al Rahman (The Merciful Who grants without asking), Al Rahim (The One Who repeats mercy and WHO CREATES RESULTS), Maalik e You mud Din (The Master of Day of Judgement, The Master of glory of His Way)

== Thus there is cause and effect. There is free will within a system. There is accountability too.

== There was creation, guided evolution, set of rules ragding cause and effects were involved in the raise of universe.. [you may read more related discussion with scientific proves in online book “Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge and Truth” by fourth Ahmadiyya Khalifah]

The question of whether humans have free will or are directed by destiny has never been answered with certainty. .

Free Will: “And (by) the soul and its perfection – He revealed to it what is worng for it and what is right for it. – He (truly) prospers who purifies it.— And he who corrupts it, is ruined . ” (ch 91: v 8 to 11)

Destiny: “ Allah has decreed: Most surely I will prevail, I and My Mesengers. Verily Allah is Powerful, Mighty.” (ch 58: v 22)
But there is no Destiny which forces human for evil. God is pure.

Philosophers have long said that people create their own fates or destinies. On the other hand, science and logic say that everything was caused by causes that preceded the event, and those causes go back to the beginning of this universe and before. .

== Human has choice to lift one leg at a time logically. Lifting two legs simultaneously is not possible, it is destined.

Individuals have no control of their actions, because their apparent motivations were caused by causes that go back to before the individual was born. The causes are lock within DNA and in our surroundings and in history. .

If individual have no controls over their actions, then all criminals has be released. Crime diminishes when law and order is strict. It is the idea of accountibilty which continuously reminds one to be careful. To be careful means human has power to control him/her-self. Traits based acts are true but there is stronger inbuilt nervous system which do not let one to disintegrate. Religion tells the idea of repentance and its acceptance by God. It is Hope, it is salvation.

Personally, I would like to think that I have some control over my life, but I am a logical person, so I see the validity of the argument that the causes came before I did. .

Cause and effect plus Control. When people visit a country, they are free but they are under the law of land. Free Will works inside a vast circle.

What do you think about this? And what do the various scriptures say. I know that the Bible is undecided, and I believe that the Koran comes down for cause and effect.

Aspects with respect to Holy Quran are mentioned in http://www.online-literature.com/for...arious-Aspects
Misunderstanding about Destiny
Two incorrect views
In fact, according to Holy Quran
i- People are given choice, God does not force anything
ii- God has issued Destiny too
Knowlede of God and Destiny should not be confused as same
Types of Destiny
Relation between Destiny and (Ways and) Means
Working of certain Destinies
Change in Destiny
Destiny and Prophecies
Destiny and human effort
Acceptance of Prayers and Destiny
NEEDS TO HAVE FAITH ABOUT DESTINY / QADAR
FAITH IN DESTINY HELPS CLIMB 7 SPIRITUAL STAGES

[YesNo]

== Human has choice to lift one leg at a time logically. Lifting two legs simultaneously is not possible, it is destined.

Good point. I also thought the Quran accepted free will. Your post seems to confirm that.

I wonder how the various religions differ regarding it. At the moment it seems they are very similar.

[osho]

Freewill is a false philosophical proposition in a vortext of things since things happen and things account fo things or one event has to do with another event in the chain and what we call freewill is only a christian brainchild and in fact external factors play play significant roles. In fact events happen since they are in a chain. Things or events are intertwined,or to put it differently one event totally causes another event. For example when persons steal things there must be some reason behind the act of the event. The thief must be poor or he must have some acute problems and he is just a tool. When a person is good or bad there must be some background or something that has a role. The thieft is a social ill and the person involved in the act of the the theft must have been doing the same under some circumstances. If he or she is doing some ignoble or immoral deeds there maybe his parents. Most of what children hear from their parents will be deeply influencial and what he hears from his society and his society consists of the people he accompanies and what he does or the way he thinks or does have a role in shaping his life.
How can people do something not guided by his social environments. No child can totally protect or shield himself. Will he have free will? Does he have the capacity for discriminating the good from the bad