Do you believe in Free will? Determinism?

[Jodes]

I'm really curious where you all stand!

I was reading "Determined" by Sapolsky. He says most people fall into the category of believing in determinism AND free will, but he and I believe in determinism and not free will. Although I think chaos theory does introduce a practical limit on determinism, and quantum randomness even more so.

Where do you lie? And why?

[popeye1945]

I'm really curious where you all stand!

I was reading "Determined" by Sapolsky. He says most people fall into the category of believing in determinism AND free will, but he and I believe in determinism and not free will. Although I think chaos theory does introduce a practical limit on determinism, and quantum randomness even more so.

Where do you lie? And why?

If our apparent reality, our everyday reality, is a biological readout, a projection of our knowledge in meanings into the physical world. We experience nothing of the ultimate truth, the energy, vibrations, and frequencies which constitute the objective world/ultimate reality. How can there be any such thing as free will? Our reality is shaped by the energy, vibrations, and frequencies that affect our bodies; what we experience is the resulting alteration of our bodies. Through these constant changes affecting our bodies, a relative guidance system is created for surviving in the world. There is nothing voluntary about it; it is just being part of the world, a reaction is a means of being in the world or of the world. This is accomplished through biological evolution, and staying in sync with the ever-changing world. This is not the end of involuntary development. There is an old saying that context defines, which does not just apply to words in sentences. When you come into this world devoid of identity, it is through one's reactions to one's environmental context that one acquires an identity. Living one's life in whatever environmental context awaits you, again, this is an involuntary process. What happens to you daily changes you, psychologically, chemically, and through what is termed epigenetics determines what genes will be turned on and off. This turning on and off of genes can be handed down to the next generation with no conscious will having a say in the process; it is all as involuntary as your next breath. Free will is a highly functional delusion, but a delusion nonetheless.

[Impenitent]

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

[popeye1945]

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

To a degree, one cannot be held responsible for one's state of mind in the present. One's psychology in the moment has been shaped by one's history of involuntary changes. After birth, context defines the constitution to have an identity, and the identity is formed by the happenstances of the constitution's relations to its context. It is through a process of epigenetics that one's daily experiences turn genes on or off, which can be inherited. Again, this is involuntary. While society still has to deal with bad behaviour, it is the behaviour that needs to be controlled without holding the agent of the behaviour entirely responsible. Society must protect itself from these unfortunate outcomes with a conditioned perspective and moral outlook.

[Zenita01]

So maybe not pure free will, but enough wiggle room that concepts like responsibility and choice still have meaning in day-to-day life.

[accelafine]

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

So exactly the same 'argument' as the one religious nuts use when it comes to 'God'. 'Funny' that. I find it really strange the way people think that their personal belief/ideology decides whether or not something is true.

[Flannel Jesus]

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

So exactly the same 'argument' as the one religious nuts use when it comes to 'God'. 'Funny' that. I find it really strange the way people think that their personal belief/ideology decides whether or not something is true.

I just find it really strange that he signs his name to the most banal of posts. Does he not realize his name is already to the side of the words? Does he like his name that much that he needs to see it again?

[Impenitent]

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

So exactly the same 'argument' as the one religious nuts use when it comes to 'God'. 'Funny' that. I find it really strange the way people think that their personal belief/ideology decides whether or not something is true.

I just find it really strange that he signs his name to the most banal of posts. Does he not realize his name is already to the side of the words? Does he like his name that much that he needs to see it again?

A habit I picked up from Weary Locomotive on Kill Devil Hill years before ILP

-Imp

[popeye1945]

So maybe not pure free will, but enough wiggle room that concepts like responsibility and choice still have meaning in day-to-day life.

Society as a protection method must control the agent of a crime, with the understanding that this particular individual is the product of a chaotic process, and it could be you instead of him who needs to be confined for the welfare of the population. It would be a great deal more complicated, but it would lead by reason to a greater compassion.

[MikeNovack]

There is a problem with "determinism", what do we mean exactly?

We might suggest "determined" if true and perfect knowledge of the current state made fixed, predictable, all states into the future. But what if we can't do that, what if we can't calculate/predict all future states. That's what we mean when we say a system is chaotic.

Let's say we have a universe, a very simple universe. It is a rectangular box, size A x B x C, with perfectly elastic walls. There may be balls within this box of mass m and diameter d, also perfectly elastic. So all we are considering is collisions between the balls and the walls and the balls with each other. A state would be the position of each ball and its velocity (direction and speed).

Let's start real simple, the universe has one ball in it. No matter what the size of d compared to A, B, and C (as long as less so ball fits inside) and no matter what the velocity at state 0, our little universe is not chaotic. We would be able to predict all future states. But now let's add some balls to this universe. Let's have three balls. Depending on the size of d (compared to A, B, and C) there are some initial positions of the balls and some initial velocities where the balls would never collide with each other and the system is not chaotic. All future states remain predictable. But that's just SOME initial positions and velocities. For other initial states, there will be collisions between the ball, and the system will be chaotic. <<give me a break, been out of school more than sixty years, so I might be remembering wrong,but I think two balls not enough to be chaotic but three are >>

Now I am not saying unable to make probabilistic predictions about the future states of a chaotic system or be unable to definitely specify impossible future states (for example, in no future state will any ball have a velocity such that its energy would be more than the initial total energy). For discussing free will, it is the probabilistic part that I believe comesinto play.

I don't think anybody wants to deny that our real universe, multiple forces and a heck of a lot more than three balls is chaotic. So I will allow "deterministic" (not going to bring in quantum mechanics to defend free will). Deterministic but chaotic. Now the usual argument that determinism makes free will impossible goes like this. We are in some stateC0, and so we have no free choice because constrained to pick 0, the fact that we are n stateC0 was determined by the prior states we were in. But the system is chaotic. Those prior states only result a probability we are in stateC0 constrained to pick 0, so those prior states determine only a probability we pick 0. By a different probability wear are actually in stateC1 constrained to pick 1, a different probability we pick 2, etc.

What do people think? Enough to call "Free Will"? After all, haven't yet tried to describe what we mean by free will.

[ThinkOfOne]

I'm really curious where you all stand!

I was reading "Determined" by Sapolsky. He says most people fall into the category of believing in determinism AND free will, but he and I believe in determinism and not free will. Although I think chaos theory does introduce a practical limit on determinism, and quantum randomness even more so.

Where do you lie? And why?

Ultimately all emotionally mature adults have free will. It comes with consciousness. Have yet to have come across a well-reasoned case to the contrary. If anyone thinks that they can make one, I'd like to hear it.

[accelafine]

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

So exactly the same 'argument' as the one religious nuts use when it comes to 'God'. 'Funny' that. I find it really strange the way people think that their personal belief/ideology decides whether or not something is true.

I just find it really strange that he signs his name to the most banal of posts. Does he not realize his name is already to the side of the words? Does he like his name that much that he needs to see it again?

Obvious narcissism coupled with obsessive compulsive disorder. Both very common on this site for some reason. Humans manage to poison EVERYTHING.

[popeye1945]

I'm really curious where you all stand!

I was reading "Determined" by Sapolsky. He says most people fall into the category of believing in determinism AND free will, but he and I believe in determinism and not free will. Although I think chaos theory does introduce a practical limit on determinism, and quantum randomness even more so.

Where do you lie? And why?

Ultimately all emotionally mature adults have free will. It comes with consciousness. Have yet to have come across a well-reasoned case to the contrary. If anyone thinks that they can make one, I'd like to hear it.

How can one believe in free will when, as an organism, you are the medium of the future of the species? Nature is not concerned with the individual but cares only for the species. You come into this world with a pure constitution, without an identity, a variation of the human pattern. So, there must be on some level a hardwired presumption of a given environment that is awaiting your human physiology. That environmental context and your reactions to it will form an identity within you. Your life experience is an epigenetic creator of your psychology and chemistry, manipulating your genetic information, switching some genes on or off depending on what your context does to you. Each event changes your psychology and chemistry to deal with context traumatic experiences being passed on to your progeny in the form of genes turned off or those turned on, so the pattern is re-adjusted. Now, consider that process in action over the eons, each new context rewriting the pattern/constitution of your creation.

Speaking of context again, we have the family factory system producing the strengths and weaknesses of the parents in their unaware children; this process is involuntary on both sides of the equation. Ill-adapted parents are going to produce ill-adapted children, passing on their strengths and weaknesses in a process similar to osmosis. Just the fact that experience changes you both psychologically and chemically, and you are unaware of this process from day one, it being involuntary. The claim of free will should sound absurd. Context transforms you constantly from your mother's womb to the grave, for at that time you are your mother and what happens to her happens to you, the cosmos and the earth playing each organism as its instrument and the melody that it plays is the organism's psyche and general constitution it decides what kind of word the individual live in, , the harsher the environment the more profound the changes. The complexity of being is so profound that other than an instinct for survival as one's driving will, I see no other.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

I'm really curious where you all stand!

I was reading "Determined" by Sapolsky. He says most people fall into the category of believing in determinism AND free will, but he and I believe in determinism and not free will. Although I think chaos theory does introduce a practical limit on determinism, and quantum randomness even more so.

Where do you lie? And why?

Chaos and indeterminism are determined.

So maybe not pure free will, but enough wiggle room that concepts like responsibility and choice still have meaning in day-to-day life.

Absolutely. Whence compatibilism. We have the illusion of free will. By common sense. Nobody has ever answered my question whether God would have it?

if there is no free will, there can be no moral responsibility...

-Imp

Ah, the old Cartesian fallacy. There is if we say there is. And we do.

[Eodnhoj7]

Well lets look at the obvious:

Determinism and free will are both distinctions.

Distinctions lead to other distinctions and the change is spontaneous thus order occurs within randomness and within randomness order.

Visualize the yin/yang. Assign one value to black and the other to white. That is the best way to view these distinctions symbolically.