Does the "Free Will" point of view affect morals and character?

[Wizard22]

Compare:
Belief in "Free Will"
Belief in "God"


Then admit that some beliefs are True while others are False. You are looking for directions to a restaurant in a new city. You approach some bystanders and ask them for directions. They tell you "go down the street to the T-intersection, take a right and you'll get there". So you go down the street, you have a choice: Left or Right. Do you have True or False information? Is your Belief true?

So from the start of this thread, it should be obvious how beliefs motivate people. It does affect how you move and what choices you'll make. Just as believing in God while deeply affect your life, so too will believing in Free-Will. Or believing in Science. The challenge is about putting your beliefs to the test, proving them right or wrong, true or false, just or unjust. Reality determines these truths.

Maybe you got bad directions. Maybe not. You still have to Choose.

[Wizard22]

Do beliefs have direct and immediate Causal influence? By the above example, yes, they absolutely do. And everybody knows this.

So why are people in this thread pretending that they don't??

[Wizard22]

The real mistake in Western Civilization is the presumption that everybody, or even most, other people have, believe, or act from the premise of Free-Will. They don't. You don't. Most people don't believe in free-will, and certainly don't act as-if they do.

Proof?

This thread, only a few here defend free-will, against a larger majority who deny it. 2 to 1. Apply this to 1 billion Western Civilization inhabitants. 1 out of 3 people, entertain the notion of free-will, of being free in life. Does it affect morals and characters?

Absolutely it does.

It's as simple as the Denial that it does not. So why do you deny it?

[Sculptor]

I think people tend to compartmentalise all sorts of contradictory beliefs, or at least have no awareness that they are connected.
On this particular issue it strikes me that the dreadful penal system in the US is the way it is because people are seen to be utterly responsible for their own lives. That is an underlying ideology it feeds the American dream. But are not willing to look at the failings of other systems such as poor education and welfare that inevitably leads to crime; in fact they deny such connections. The system is consciously promoted by the power holders who incidentally use their influence to grant themselves tax breaks, and pay cheques for social projects, whilst keeping a docile and compliant populace from complaining and or joining together to form unions for change. It's all part of the cult of the free individual. Individuals are atomised; out for themselves and reject unions. This feeds through the system to the death penalty, and lack of rehab and correctionalism. I realise that the terminology of penal institutions can hint at a determinism. Prisons are called "Correctional Facilities" which might hint at an old Protestant or Calvinist approach but this seems have been subsumed under an avalanche of privatisation and target hitting scrutiny.

Ideologies such as this are insidious. "Socialism" is poorly understood an sits in as a dirty word for anything that might mean taxation .

I agree with the American judicial system by way erring on the side of caution.

It only does that when rich lawyer are present. Ordinary people just get thrown in gaol.

This is why free-will is implied, but not necessarily found. Not everybody has free-will. Therefore not everybody is accountable for their crimes, or themselves. Many criminals are proud of their crime. Many do not feel 'Guilty' at all. Some openly admit that they'll commit crime again, if let loose.

And where are are your stats to make such a banal statement like that?

The biggest problem with criminals is they don't have a social cognizance to understand their effects and relationships to others at large.

You have some odd ideas about people you do not know.

So they don't understand what's right and wrong, what punishments will be met, or how their crimes hurt others. Many are psychopaths who don't care, and enjoy, hurting others. Prevention of crime is preferable, but not practical. This is why societies settle on punishment, ad hoc, as a means of 'showing' society that criminals are punished. It's not about crime prevention. Different societies tolerate different amounts and severities of crime.

A highly disciplined society, will not tolerate any crime at all, even a small infraction like jaywalking. It takes a special type of people to create and maintain such a society.

Liberal societies are much more tolerant of crime and criminals, offering 'forgiveness and understanding' even to the cruelest and most violent offenders.

There's no one-size-fits-all solution to crime & punishment.

Have you any idea how penal systems and incarceration rates vary across the world?

[phyllo]

I agree with the American judicial system by way erring on the side of caution.

That's not justice.

Not everybody has free-will.

Either everyone has free-will or nobody does.

[Wizard22]

That's not justice.

Convicting an innocent man, is justice to you?

Either everyone has free-will or nobody does.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

[Wizard22]

It only does that when rich lawyer are present. Ordinary people just get thrown in gaol.

That's not true. Americans are judged by our peers, a jury. Usually Justice prevails. Juries rule against rich lawyers sometimes too.

Have you any idea how penal systems and incarceration rates vary across the world?

One society outlaws jaywalking, another does not. One society lets murderers out of jail freely, another does not. Every society is different.

Tell me the society you would like.

[phyllo]

The real mistake in Western Civilization is the presumption that everybody, or even most, other people have, believe, or act from the premise of Free-Will. They don't. You don't. Most people don't believe in free-will, and certainly don't act as-if they do.

Proof?

This thread, only a few here defend free-will, against a larger majority who deny it. 2 to 1. Apply this to 1 billion Western Civilization inhabitants. 1 out of 3 people, entertain the notion of free-will, of being free in life. Does it affect morals and characters?

Absolutely it does.

It's as simple as the Denial that it does not. So why do you deny it?

Actually most people behave in a compatibilist manner:

As shown in this study:

Whether we have free will or not has been debated amongst scholars for centuries, yet laypeople’s intuitions on this issue have only been studied fairly recently [23,36]. It has been pointed out that lay intuitions on free will are often conflicting [23], as we generally feel as if we have a free choice between multiple alternatives (free will), yet we also feel that everything that is happening should have a causal explanation (determinism). For many scholars, these intuitions are incompatible, motivating incompatibilist theories on free will, such as libertarianism [14], according to which we are free because our world is not deterministic, or hard determinism, according to which we have no free will because we are determined. Crucially, it remained unclear whether similar intuitions are prevalent in the general public as well. Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views (see also [3,18] for converging evidence) as well as hard determinist views (see S8 Analysis). This shows a disconnection between belief in explicit concepts regarding free will, and the resulting behavior, and future research should measure both independently.

Regarding determinism beliefs by themselves, previous work suggests that belief in determinism is relatively weak in the general public [23], but our data only partly support this notion. While most people in the US indeed did not believe in determinism, the opposite was true in Singapore, which underscores the need to study FWB in a variety of different cultures to avoid sampling biases [24]. One tentative explanation for this difference might be that the US are a highly individualistic country, while SGP is a more collectivistic country [30], and US citizens might be more strongly opposed to their behavior being determined by forces outside their direct control (see also [37] and S1 Analysis for a comparison of Locus of Control between countries). Although we have shown that this effect cannot be attributed to differences in age, sex, or education, the present data alone cannot conclusively attribute this effect to individualism alone. While individualism might be one of the most prominent differences between the US and SGP, both countries also differ along many other dimensions, which might potentially also explain this effect. Clearly, future work will have to address the link between individualism and free will beliefs more directly (see also [38]). Regarding intuitions on free will, belief in free will was pervasive in both cultures (see also [39]), and was correlated positively with determinism. Surprisingly, we found no difference in general free will beliefs across both countries, despite the high statistical power of our design. This shows the robustness of general free will beliefs despite the many differences between these two cultures. Overall, our results suggest that a large part of the general public has libertarian and compatibilist (SGP), or only libertarian (US) intuitions on free will, but behave in a way that is more in line with compatibilist intuitions irrespective whether they are from the US or SGP.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0221617

[Wizard22]

Then we agree, some people have free-will, or at least believe in it...others don't.

So which belief is True?

(hint: it's free-will)

[phyllo]

That's not justice.

Convicting an innocent man, is justice to you?

There is an excessive incarceration rate in the US. Therefore "erring on the side of caution" implies that innocent people ought to be jailed in case there is any doubt in the case. Further confirmed by what you wrote about criminals.

Of course, I may have misinterpreted your statement.

Either everyone has free-will or nobody does.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

On that note i leave you so you can enjoy your magical thinking in peace.

[popeye1945]

How can one assume in free will, when one does not know what one's next thought is going to be?

[Wizard22]

Here's an interesting thing about free-will...

Unlike Agnostics with God, waiting on more information, or whatever evidence/proof they require, Agnosticism does not apply to the free-will v determinist debate.

Because while you're waiting for more information, you're still making decisions and choices in your life. And you are either acting as-if you have free-will, or not. That's the kicker. You can't pretend to avoid the situation. People do live their lives by one belief or the other, and usually oblivious to which way their Bias skews.

Animals, for example, can make choices relatively freely without coercion. Do animals have free-will? If so, then 'belief' is not a requirement. Self-awareness and self-consciousness, are not requirements to free-will.

[Wizard22]

Therefore "erring on the side of caution" implies that innocent people ought to be jailed in case there is any doubt in the case. Further confirmed by what you wrote about criminals.

Of course, I may have misinterpreted your statement.

It seems you did misinterpret it.

I meant it is better to be cautious not to convict innocent people of crimes they did not commit.

In non-Western countries: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, you can be guilty until proven innocent. Who here really wants Eastern Civilization's Justice systems??? Anybody??

[Wizard22]

How can one assume in free will, when one does not know what one's next thought is going to be?

Because you don't need to know the future, to have free-will?

[phyllo]

Your repeatedly equivocate "reality of free-will" and "belief in free-will" .