free will: not all it's cracked up to be

[alpha]

I got no clue what that is.

Again: stop lookin' at the placeholder and look at the event or action the placeholder stands for. You have the perfect testing ground: yourself. As you go through your day, apparently makin' choices (large and small), ask yourself 'do these choices (not the problem you make a choice about, but only your consideration of how to proceed) I make begin with me?' Does it seem, as you pause and consider and choose, that you are the origin of the choice, or that you are merely a conduit for causes that aren't you? Does it seem that the past informs your choices or does it dominate and direct them?

your problem is that you put too much emphasis on how things appear/seem/feel/etc.. compatibilism is the belief that "freewill" exists, albeit only an artificial/illusory one. they have realized that what we (specially you) perceive to be actual choice stemming independently from us, is nothing more than an illusion. all of it is strict cause and effect.


I believe, if you are sane and honest, you'll conclude it is 'you' who chooses, even with the weight of the past pressing down on you, and the restraints of the way the world works binding you up.

if i'm really really honest, i'd conclude that it only seems and appears to be me who's "choosing" anything.


I call this 'agency' (just another word that doesn't really mean jack)...you can call it what you like...doesn't matter what any one names 'it' cuz 'it' is 'you'.

"Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action."

Nope. Fundamentally, 'free will' only is a will that is free (of the way the world works), sumthin' I addressed up thread and do not endorse.

I like agency (just another word), which means an individual (agent) can pause, consider, choose, form intent, act or respond. 'Free'(dom) need not apply.

And: no, lacking the absolute freedom implied by a will free of constraint is not synonomous with determinism...poor example: the jailed man can still pace the cage, write a letter to relatives, etc., his circumstance (jailed) constrains him but does not determine him....the will (just another word) is constrained by the world but not determined by it.

what you're really trying to say (and doing a pretty poor job at it) is that you believe that we have limited freewill. this is what most people who believe in freewill, believe. not many (if any) people believe in 100% free will. us determinists deny the existence (and even the possibility) of any freewill, even 0.000001%. it might seem like we have some control, but in actuality, we don't.

[henry quirk]

See my last couple of responses to RG1: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15369&p=228051#p228051

'nuff said.

[Vor]

If a criminal defendant has no free will, then he cannot be held responsible for his crime, because he could not have chosen otherwise.

The legal system advocates we have free will and we are punished according to our choices.

[Hobbes' Choice]

If a criminal defendant has no free will, then he cannot be held responsible for his crime, because he could not have chosen otherwise.

The legal system advocates we have free will and we are punished according to our choices.

A legal system that is deterministic is much more useful and efficient. It holds that for each crime there are underlying reasons. With this knowledge the notion of change, rehabilitation and correction make sense.

If it is just about free-will, then all you are bale to do is punish - which leads to recidivism.

A deterministic legal system punishes not the person, but the act. And is capable of seeking remedial action.

[alpha]

If a criminal defendant has no free will, then he cannot be held responsible for his crime, because he could not have chosen otherwise.

The legal system advocates we have free will and we are punished according to our choices.

A legal system that is deterministic is much more useful and efficient. It holds that for each crime there are underlying reasons. With this knowledge the notion of change, rehabilitation and correction make sense.

If it is just about free-will, then all you are bale to do is punish - which leads to recidivism.

A deterministic legal system punishes not the person, but the act. And is capable of seeking remedial action.

to add to hobbes' argument, this is all based on what any particular legal system deems "crime" and "criminal". the words themselves imply freewill, which is debatable at best.

[Craig95005]

Like so many other questions, it's all about the definitions. Go to wikipedia, and "free will" is defined as the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. That's the common sense meaning, and so of course we have free will. Now if God existed and knew the position and state of every neuron in our brains, He could predict (disregarding quantum uncertainty) what we would do. And we are all pushed in various directions by our genetics, our upbringing, and our life experiences - but as far as we can tell, we can choose to raise our left hand, our right hand, both, or neither. In other words, we don't have free will at the quantum level or the neuron level, but we do at the level at which our personalities operate. I know it's fashionable in some circles to assert that we don't have free will, but that's overthinking it in an attempt to prove something that we all know deep down isn't true. It's an intellectual game with almost no significance.

Why do people want to believe that we don't have free will? In most cases, they don't feel that it's fair to punish those who break the law, because there were circumstances that made the person unable to deviate from the path laid out for him. Personally I think that's misplaced. We can only deal with individuals as they are. If someone's a really nasty, violent dude, I don't care much how he got that way, I want him incarcerated if he breaks the law.

Now if we didn't have free will, it would be incorrect to blame someone like Jeffrey Dahmer or Hitler for bad behavior, and it would also be wrong to praise someone like Darwin or Einstein for Mozart for their contributions, since we are all automatons, and have no control over what we do.

But we do have free will, in every meaningful way.

[henry quirk]

Craig,

As my posts here and in other threads show, I'm on your side, but, as I told someone yesterday, the determinists aren't listening.

RG1 in particular (like Ned before him) is completely deaf to anything falling outside of his 'religion' (and that's fundamentally what it is, a faith based on a faulty premise).

[alpha]

Like so many other questions, it's all about the definitions. Go to wikipedia, and "free will" is defined as the ability to choose between different possible courses of action. That's the common sense meaning, and so of course we have free will. Now if God existed and knew the position and state of every neuron in our brains, He could predict (disregarding quantum uncertainty) what we would do. And we are all pushed in various directions by our genetics, our upbringing, and our life experiences - but as far as we can tell, we can choose to raise our left hand, our right hand, both, or neither. In other words, we don't have free will at the quantum level or the neuron level, but we do at the level at which our personalities operate. I know it's fashionable in some circles to assert that we don't have free will, but that's overthinking it in an attempt to prove something that we all know deep down isn't true. It's an intellectual game with almost no significance.

Why do people want to believe that we don't have free will? In most cases, they don't feel that it's fair to punish those who break the law, because there were circumstances that made the person unable to deviate from the path laid out for him. Personally I think that's misplaced. We can only deal with individuals as they are. If someone's a really nasty, violent dude, I don't care much how he got that way, I want him incarcerated if he breaks the law.

Now if we didn't have free will, it would be incorrect to blame someone like Jeffrey Dahmer or Hitler for bad behavior, and it would also be wrong to praise someone like Darwin or Einstein for Mozart for their contributions, since we are all automatons, and have no control over what we do.

But we do have free will, in every meaningful way.

Craig,

As my posts here and in other threads show, I'm on your side, but, as I told someone yesterday, the determinists aren't listening.

RG1 in particular (like Ned before him) is completely deaf to anything falling outside of his 'religion' (and that's fundamentally what it is, a faith based on a faulty premise).

what's interesting to me, is that any proof and deductive reasoning we provide, is simply dismissed with emotional reasoning. things like "we know", "we feel", "it's obvious" and so on.

henry, can you pinpoint that "faulty premise" for us? or is it just some vague elusive thing?

craig, i don't think you've even read the arguments for determinism, and simply dismiss them because you wanna condemn hitler, and praise mozart.

please ask wikipedia what exactly "choose" means. is it genuinely independant (even if just 1%) choosing, or an artificial choosing?

[henry quirk]

I imagine a great deal of what I take as natural, for granted, must be alien to you. For example, pain is impossible to quantify in an objective way (there's no way to measure pain beyond the description of it by the one with the pain) so, by your logic, pain cannot be real, and any one claiming to have pain is in the midst of an illusion. And that's just physical pain I'm takin' about...for you, any one claiming a psychological woe (I'm sad or I'm upset) must be, by your logic, a raving nutjob. How could you see it otherwise? Sadness is truly an interior event, unmeasrable. So, by your thinkin', sadness is just another illusion (or, delusion).

Love (the irreducible value one applies to another) that too must be an illusion.

Things pass strange, in my book, for those in the robot brigade (determinists).

[alpha]

I imagine a great deal of what I take as natural, for granted, must be alien to you. For example, pain is impossible to quantify in an objective way (there's no way to measure pain beyond the description of it by the one with the pain) so, by your logic, pain cannot be real, and any one claiming to have pain is in the midst of an illusion. And that's just physical pain I'm takin' about...for you, any one claiming a psychological woe (I'm sad or I'm upset) must be, by your logic, a raving nutjob. How could you see it otherwise? Sadness is truly an interior event, unmeasrable. So, by your thinkin', sadness is just another illusion (or, delusion).

Love (the irreducible value one applies to another) that too must be an illusion.

Things pass strange, in my book, for those in the robot brigade (determinists).

pain, whether physical, or psychological, is surely no illusion, or delusion. believe me, i know more about pain than most people. but as rg1 says, it's nothing more than experience; a real experience, is still just an experience. we had/have no real choice in the matter.

my argument isn't about whether something is measurable (to us) or not. it's about universal truths. absolutes, if you will. if you're a relativist, there's no way you can ever understand me, or me you.

the central point of the whole argument, is whether any true freewill is actually possible. for it to be possible, it must be proven to be possible, by arguments other than "i make choices all the time", "i direct and redirect stuff all the time", "i weigh, compare,... stuff all the time".

[henry quirk]

"the central point of the whole argument, is whether any true freewill is actually possible"

That just ain't so.

I know you wanna make me defend a will free of restraint but I won't, haven't, and if you truly believe that's what I've been doing over multiple threads, then you aren't readin' what I post.

We got a canyon between us that just keeps gettin' wider...

[alpha]

"the central point of the whole argument, is whether any true freewill is actually possible"

That just ain't so.

I know you wanna make me defend a will free of restraint but I won't, haven't, and if you truly believe that's what I've been doing over multiple threads, then you aren't readin' what I post.

We got a canyon between us that just keeps gettin' wider...

where did i say anything about "free of restraint"? by "truly free" i mean "genuine". for it to be true freewill, at least a part of it must be unrestrained. it's impossible for even 0.00001% of our wills to be unrestrained (not subject to any causes, effecters, manipulators, forces, etc.), therefor, our will is nothing more than a puppet, influenced, and controlled by internal and eternal forces, outside of our actual control.

[Jaded Sage]

It's been a long time since I learned all this, but a lot of this is mistaken. Unless we are coming up with new definitions of free will, which is awesome. I always thought the standard one sucked. But there are standard definitions of compatablism and determinism. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. I think the standard definition of free will means that "you could have acted otherwise." I never got a prof to explain why we should understand something in the present in terms of the past.

Here's a fun thought experiment: there's a demon inside you. It's only mildly evil. Whenever you are walking down the street and there's a fork in the road, if you decide to go left, it changes your mind without you knowing and makes you decide to go right instead. It leaves you alone if you decide to go right on your own. Are you acting out of free will or not?

[alpha]

It's been a long time since I learned all this, but a lot of this is mistaken. Unless we are coming up with new definitions of free will, which is awesome. I always thought the standard one sucked. But there are standard definitions of compatablism and determinism. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. I think the standard definition of free will means that "you could have acted otherwise." I never got a prof to explain why we should understand something in the present in terms of the past.

this means that anyone would've acted the exact same way, under the exact same circumstances (internal and external factors, forces, variables, etc.). logic states that if a full cause (one large cause, or several small ones) exists, the effect must follow, the effect has absolutely no say in whether it wants to exist, or how it exists. it's all up to the cause, which itself is an effect of another cause(s).

Here's a fun thought experiment: there's a demon inside you. It's only mildly evil. Whenever you are walking down the street and there's a fork in the road, if you decide to go left, it changes your mind without you knowing and makes you decide to go right instead. It leaves you alone if you decide to go right on your own. Are you acting out of free will or not?

i don't know about this one.

[Jaded Sage]

Hm. I usually think in terms of single causes (though I am aware of multiple factors). Thanks, bud.