Free will - does it exist?

Spin-off from another thread

Broadwind wrote: I do have a few theories on this, and the main one being i think free will is an illusion. I think that people are entirely a result of their environment and their "initial conditions" (i.e genetics). There is no "me" directing the show making the choices. If time was reversed and replayed you would see the same person do the same thing again and would swear they had a free-will choice about it. I guess some of my thoughts about this come from having a disorder of free-will.

My preliminary response was

HungryJoe wrote:I consider this very "iffy", but rather than discuss it here I'll make a new thread about it as it's a large topic. I hope you'll participate

Just to put any misunderstandings out of the way this thread is free for all and not intended as an exclusive discussion between Broadwind and I.

When it comes to free will I have an opportunistic Pascals wager (link) approach to it. Naturally this implies that I think that the Pascals wager type of thinking is valid here even though the argument is bunk in its original application. It goes like this:
Premises:
1. Either I have free will or I don't
2. Either I think I have free will or I think I don't have free will.
3. All permutations of 1 and 2 are equally possible (for the sake of simplicity)
If I have free will and think I have free will I will make the necessary choices. Arguably this is a good thing. (Good)
If I don't have free will, but are under the illusion that I have it then this illusion will not influence my actions negatively because I lack free will anyway. (neutral)
If I do have free will, but I think I don't have it then I may be passive in response to events where I did in fact have a choice. The consequences of this are likely to be detrimental to me. (Bad)
If I don't have free will and I don't think I have free will things will move along as predetermined. (neutral)
Thinking I have free will is either good or neutral.
Thinking I don't have free will is either neutral or bad.
Therefore I choose to think I have free will.

Free will is a hot topic in philosophy, religion and science, particularly neuroscience. One way around the whole mess is to look at the self differently. Traditionally self has been defined as the conscious and choosing agent within the brain (some will say mind here) while the religious will go further and say it's the soul/spirit which presumably isn't part of the brain at all. I prefer to turn this on its head and say "the self" is that which chooses (stolen from a philosopher named Dennett), be it conscious or unconscious and be it brain, mind or soul. This may be seen as an argument from redefinition, but the essence is that I accept full responsibility for that which is me, regardless of prior causes because I cannot separate those prior causes from that which is me. I almost always choose strawberry flavoured icecream, but tomorrow I can choose chocolate if I want to. There is no force that makes me always choose strawberry, but doubtless there is a reason in the past why I prefer it. In the absence of such a force I have a free will to act with or against my instincts.

I tend to think that free will does not exist. I look at by considering that every decision you ever make is based on your past experiences and how you feel at the time. Your past experiences and how you feel at the time are based on previous decisions and so on and so on back until you are born.

Your last paragraph is exactly how I would describe the argument against there being a free will. Everything we do can be predicted, if we only knew the current state of the myriad preconditions prior to the event. These preconditions include our body temperature, our level of tiredness, the weather, our past history, etc. All contribute to our decisions.

Of course, the Uncertainty Principle would tell you that you cannot predict events. However, that does not mean that we have free will. It just means that we cannot predict.

We view bugs as stupid because they have no brains; just small bundles of nerves. They are relatively complex but not on our scale. We just happen to have a super complex-network of nerves; the majority of which are assembled into the brain. That does not make us intelligent, however. We are just as 'stupid' as the bugs and everything else.

Kevin

Drives = no free will.

If we feel hungry we are compelled to eat, it's out of our hands and we can't control it. It's like this with everything.

Philosophy is boring.

Third_Eye_Seed wrote:Philosophy is boring.

I strongly agree.

Third_Eye_Seed wrote:Drives = no free will.

If we feel hungry we are compelled to eat, it's out of our hands and we can't control it. It's like this with everything.

Philosophy is boring.

Do you always eat the minute you feel the slightest hint of being hungry? Drives alone is not enough to claim we don't have free will unless you're talking about a completely uninfluenced will which is so obviously ridiculous that i don't think it's worth discussing.

Chucky wrote:Your last paragraph is exactly how I would describe the argument against there being a free will. Everything we do can be predicted, if we only knew the current state of the myriad preconditions prior to the event. These preconditions include our body temperature, our level of tiredness, the weather, our past history, etc. All contribute to our decisions.

Of course, the Uncertainty Principle would tell you that you cannot predict events. However, that does not mean that we have free will. It just means that we cannot predict.

We view bugs as stupid because they have no brains; just small bundles of nerves. They are relatively complex but not on our scale. We just happen to have a super complex-network of nerves; the majority of which are assembled into the brain. That does not make us intelligent, however. We are just as 'stupid' as the bugs and everything else.

Kevin

It may have escaped you, but you haven't actually made an argument here. You've asserted that there is no free will because everything can be predicted and then, rather than back up this, you proceed to say that we cannot predict after all. So you need another basis for your assertion.

Chucky wrote:

Third_Eye_Seed wrote:Philosophy is boring.

I strongly agree.

And what evil force in the universe compelled you both to not only read but also answer on a topic that was so obviously connected to what you find boring? Or are you both masochists by any chance?

3. All permutations of 1 and 2 are equally possible (for the sake of simplicity)

Having free will but not realizing it is possible, but will result in having far less of it. Having a functional right arm but being under the delusion of not having it will would be as bad as actually not having it since you would never use it. Third Eye Seed and Chucky have free will but probably much less than you.

Variations in the degree of free will help us see it. I know people who have more of it than I and others who have less and it is quite obvious that they do. In fact I have more of it at some times than at others and more of it in some areas than in others, for example I'm much freer in choosing ice cream flavors than I am in choosing whether to smoke or not. Variations in something or the absence of it show us its existence. Consider raising a group of people from early infancy to maturity in isolation from the rest of the world while somehow preventing them from risking their lives, and otherwise raising them to be thinkers. They would be as alive as we but wouldn't have a concept of life (except in contrast to inanimate objects) until one of them died.

Free will is what allows us to change our minds. I've talked myself into doing things as well as out. If we had our brains somehow wired to an electrode that when energized would force us to act upon a choice we would be unfree in two senses, first we would lose the freedom to wait but second we would act upon whichever desire or motive happened to be the strongest at the moment. But in real choices the strength of the various desires changes over time, and quite importantly the changes are not random but associated with intellectual activity. Indeed merely focusing consciousness on a particular desire increases its strength.

The question was properly worded. Had you asked whether we are free then the answer would be no because we aren't completely free, but freedom does exist, it exists in degrees.

I'm not persuaded by the bottom up argument that concludes that freedom doesn't exist. We don't know enough about brains or intelligence to make any conclusion, in fact new understandings in the field will have to be consistent with the observed existence of freedom. Nor can philosophy make such a conclusion. Our everyday ideas of cause are in some ways even less developed than Aristotle's and haven't fully incorporated chaos theory or mutual causation (e.g. does serotonin cause happiness or vice versa?). We should start with the observed facts and make our theories, both neurological and philosophical, conform to them.

Philosophy is boring when it comes to conclusions at variance with observed reality.

Well I think we have free will at least to an extent. There's always a lot of choices you can make in your daily life, even if sometimes it seems limited. Some choices may seem obvious, so you wouldn't think to have the other choice or even choose to ever do that so maybe you don't count it as a choice.. so I guess then you wouldn't feel like you have free will to decide to go the other way, but I think you always could if you wanted.

That reminds me of a game though, not necessarily free will, but choices in general. There was this video game I played when I was younger and it was all about choices, from drinking coffee or having tea, to stepping this way or that way. Certain choices would end up killing you... I died a lot in that game I remember..I can't actually remember the game's name though.

I don't know anything about philosophy though, anything science related etc... just reminded me of that game heh.