Philosophy Now Forum

Thanks to unconscious decisions and my sales experience and other influencing reasons, I believe that free will is severely limited, if it exists at all.

PhilX

You may want to read up on free will. There are conditions that need to be met in order to say you have free will.

What about mothers and fathers choosing a number of children, especially where contraceptives and other are available?

True, there are these "contextual intelligence" idiots who will always say they have determined your choice and who will never have the head or tail of any historical account.

Well, well, long discussion. I believe in free will because...

Of course there is no such thing. Every event is caused by a chain of events that precede it; every act is the result of an indeterminable chain of factors, mechanisms, circumstances and influences on the present actor.

The concept of free will is a merely convenient fiction without which we can't manage interpersonal transactions.
We cannot help but think, react and judge as if it were real.

You cannot maintain that free will does not exist, because such statement would suppose that you can have direct access to reality. We humans cannot have direct access to reality without any interference by our brain. So, when you say that free will does not exist, you are not saying how reality is, but how your brain conceives reality.
We can only say that we don’t know if free will exists, or that we don’t know what free will is.

Skip wrote: ↑Sun Apr 29, 2018 9:49 pm Of course there is no such thing. Every event is caused by a chain of events that precede it; every act is the result of an indeterminable chain of factors, mechanisms, circumstances and influences on the present actor.

The concept of free will is a merely convenient fiction without which we can't manage interpersonal transactions.
We cannot help but think, react and judge as if it were real.

Your statement says that people can not commit evil actions which seem hugely implausible. Reduction ad ab. this fast?!

Why implausible? Just because it is not politically correct?

There is nothing political about it.
People are capable of all sorts of actions - those we consider evil as well as those we consider good, or silly or heroic or inconsequential or simply mundane. The chain - or rather, web of chains - of causation for each one goes back billions of years, and we have no way of tracing more than the most recent two or three links. When we can, and take the trouble to do so, we may excuse and/or forgive a disapproved action. At other times, we may judge the perpetrator even more harshly when we discover that the proximate causes were also evil.
It is precisely because we are bound by social values that we cannot help but assess one another's and our own thoughts, desires, plans and deeds as if they resulted from autonomous volition. That moral conditioning is part of the chain of causation that impels our judgment.
That is why we cannot function as social units, or even solitary ones, without the illusion of free will.

If you are a leader, you don't know where you are going,
and if you are following, what's the plan?,
and don't say "no free will" because will has a meaning but "no will" doesn't.

No space has no meaning without actual space and no time has no meaning without actual time.

So, no will has no meaning without actual will,

What's your point?

All choice is a choiceless choice.

Choice comes as and through you but not from you.

Not everyone will hear this.

.

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 11:32 am All choice is a choiceless choice.

Choice comes as and through you but not from you.

Not everyone will hear this.

.

I hear you.

What is chickenless chicken?

jayjacobus wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:09 pm
What is chickenless chicken?

A chicklenless chicken is a thought.

I was being sarcastic.

You don't know what a choiceless choice is because it isn't defined as you use it.

jayjacobus wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 1:20 pm I was being sarcastic.

You don't know what a choiceless choice is because it isn't defined as you use it.

There is no need for sarcasm here...lets just understand what we are trying to understand.

So lets start again...all choice is a choiceless choice.

No need for paradoxical phrasing!
All choice is constrained.
Will is a mental state that we experience and to which we attribute powers it doesn't have in objective reality.
So, we do have will, and we like to imagine that we are free to exercise it in any way we choose. We do realize that freedom is
diminished by our physical abilities and circumstances - and thus plead when confronted by accusers,
but we don't know all the internal influences and limits on our range of choice -
and rarely excuse them when we see others exercising their constrained and limited will in ways we disapprove.

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 1:26 pm

jayjacobus wrote: ↑Mon Apr 30, 2018 1:20 pm I was being sarcastic.

You don't know what a choiceless choice is because it isn't defined as you use it.

There is no need for sarcasm here...lets just understand what we are trying to understand.

So lets start again...all choice is a choiceless choice.

The short definition of choiceless choice is a lose-lose situation like the choices in a concentration camp. But not all choices are lose-lose yet you seem to imply that all choices are lose-lose.