Free Will?

[☭proletarian☭]

Do we really have any free will? All of our decisions are influenced by our environment and surroundings- thus not 'free'. Even though we make a choice out of several choices it doesn't mean that it was a completely objective, or 'free' choice. In fact, you could easily make the argument it is impossible to reach an objective point of view.

I think it's really hard to explain, but I hope you guys get my point.

Discuss.

It depends on how you define 'free will'. Our actions are the product of the decisions of a mind which arise from a physical environment. The condition of that environment (the brain), naturally, effects the condition of the mind and the way it operates.

There is free will, so long as we are sure to define it as conscious decision-making within the context of the emergence of the mind from these electrochemical processes.

There is the experience of free will. That is, we experience what appears to our consciousness to be a free choosing of our own actions. Therefore, we can say with as much certainty as is possible that we have and exercise free will, with a simple footnote that this conclusion remains as agnostic as all knowledge within a positivist worldview. That we have free will is self-evident as much as our own existence.

 

[☭proletarian☭]

But how do we decide what is 'good bad or somewhere in between'? Its because of your surroundings. If you were raised in a completely different way your views of good and bad would be completely skewed from what they are now.

That's up for debate. Personally, I accept evolutionary psychology and the moral instinct as the best explanation of the basic foundations of our shared morality, upon which are constructed ethics which, in turn, can reshape those fundamental moral principles in the individual (where psychology and physiology come into play and the individual organism changes and adapts according to its own experiences).

 

[☭proletarian☭]

You are free to choose, you are free not to choose, even in not choosing you have still made a choice.
To argue there is no free choice is to say all of life is linear. This can not be proved. You can't prove that which does not exist.
Einstein said all possibilities exist, all at once! That aught to bake all our brains!

I choose to post in this thread

free will proven.

Or was your posting merely the result of the interaction of matter and energy? Do you merely experience the illusion of free will as another result of the natural laws of the universe?

Of course, from the positivist perspective, the question is moot.

 

[FireGod]

You are free to choose, you are free not to choose, even in not choosing you have still made a choice.
To argue there is no free choice is to say all of life is linear. This can not be proved. You can't prove that which does not exist.
Einstein said all possibilities exist, all at once! That aught to bake all our brains!

I choose to post in this thread

free will proven.

Or was your posting merely the result of the interaction of matter and energy? Do you merely experience the illusion of free will as another result of the natural laws of the universe?

Of course, from the positivist perspective, the question is moot.

My posting was the result of making a conscious choice, plain and simple. I take what I know and make a decision on what I choose to do.

 

[code1211]

The great thing about the argument of Free Will vs. Determinism is that everything involved in making a choice whether by free will or determinism "feels" exactly the same. We are not aware that our decisions are impacted and at the mercy of other decisions and causes all around us. The very fact that we consider actions before taking them is one of the causes that produces effects.

Our considerations before we choose are only effects of other causes. Every decision we make, goes the argument, could be predicted if the sum total of all of the causes were known and understood.

Like billiard balls bouncing around due to the impacts of other balls, our decisions seem free ony because we do not understand the other forcing "impacts".

"feels" exactly the same.

Again, determinism allows for no choice (robots don't choose) so the fact that a "choice" "feels" one way or another is an argument for free will.

we consider actions before taking them

To consider is to note options and imply a free will at work

if the sum total of all of the causes were known

I like that argument for its clarity but I think it's ultimatly flawed. I think it implys that if we don't know everything then that is proof that we can't know anything.

I've heard it put, the hand you are dealt is determinism and the way you play it is free will. I think that allows for both causation and free will. There is cause and effect for sure. That can limit your choices but not negate the need to make choices. I know I'm not a ghost in the machine and unlike a determinist, I know the difference between a blink and a wink.

Our ability to make a choice is made possible only when there are options. By the same token, our ability to make a choice is limited by the finite number of options available. I may choose to marry Halle Berry. I have never met her and very likely never will. Oh, and I'm already married. My previous choices have abridged my exercise of free will.

In my youth I would choose whether or not to run 10 miles training for the cross country season. Choosing to run 10 miles is no longer an option. Choosing to run 1/10th of a mile may be an option, but why choose it?

So, is limiting my choices voluntarily a proof of free will? Is making the choice to limit my choices a proof of determinism due to the previous experiences?

Using your example above, each succeeding moment of existance deals us a new hand. The Chinese (I think) have a saying that the same man never steps in the river. This meaning that he has grown or has been changed by the act of living and so he is a different man every time he comes to the river.

The fortunate man always has more than one option. Less fortune means more narrow choices until, at last, we have no choice. As children, we sense that we have no limits and yet, our horizons are limited. As we grow to adulthood, we gain the sense of expanding freedom and power to influence our destiny. As we eventually age, our posessions and freedoms are slowly removed from us until at length we find ourselves in the care of others with very few choices or none at all.

Every life, every single one, is guided by this general course and yet every life has at least the illusion of free will. Our condition and circumstance provides us with our choices and we make them based on what is possible. The possible is often defined for us with painful lessons.

All of our striving and all of our confidence and doubt while glorious and monumental in the moment is a replay of what has gone before countless times. If there was actually free will, would not the results of lives be more various than they have been?

The plays of Shakespeare speak to people of all nations and all races and yet were written by a man whose experiences by the standards of today could most generously be described as parochial. Christ probably never wandered more than 100 miles from his place of birth. Plato lived in Athens his whole life. 3000 years of experience, three distinct cultures, three men of seemingly different backgrounds and all recorded words that resonate in the consciousness of the modern American.

"What shadows we are. What shadows we pursue."

 

[midcan5]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

The drug addict will say, I know it is wrong, I know it will hurt me, but then goes on being a drug addict. That example holds for many things in life and many people in life, so then if we assume freewill, the problem becomes 'will' not 'free.' Freewill is similar to consciousness, it is so deeply embedded in us that we think it real and unique and special, and it is, but it is also biologically determined and experience driven.

The anti freewill argument is that given knowledge of the person we can know what they will do. I had this discussion recently in a Philosophy blog in which I argued that given a person's beliefs we can sometimes know their actions. A kind of folk psychology. It is also implied in my thought experiment. http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/100438-which-is-which.html

The freewill proponent claims that in any decision you have a choice based on reason. The assumption is you think through the choice. Does the drug addict do that, and why are some more prone to drug addiction than others. I come from a long line of alcoholics and several brothers are in AA. Oddly at times I could fall into it too, but some part of me is different. And I'm not sure it is only will.

There is also the environment argument, free to do what? Saying you have freedom means little if there is little opportunity, this is particularly true for children who do not pick their parents nor pick all the other options that make life wonderful or a bit of a horror.


"A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive." Albert Einstein

I tend to agree with Martin Gardner that it is an unknowable topic. See below.

The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener - Google Books

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Whys-Philosophical-Scrivener-Martin-Gardner/dp/0312206828/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267286248&sr=1-8]Amazon.com: The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (9780312206826): Martin Gardner: Books[/ame]