Free-will is an Illusion

[IcarusAngel]

The clearest argument against free-will I have seen, and some comments from an ecology professor. Fallacious statements like "all human action is purposeful" or even "I think" cannot stand up to scrutiny if the unconscious mind plays a large role in our decision making, or that we have no free-will.



On Sam Harris’s website, he’s just put up a short but cogent piece on free will—or rather, its absence, “You do not choose what you choose. (http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/you-do-not-choose-what-you-choose/)” One excerpt:
For [many people], freedom of will is synonymous with the idea that, with respect to any specific thought or action, one could have thought or acted differently. But to say that I could have done otherwise is merely to think the thought, “I could have done otherwise” after doing whatever I, in fact, did. Rather than indicate my freedom, this thought is just an epitaph erected to moments past. What I will do next, and why, remains, at bottom, inscrutable to me. To declare my “freedom” is tantamount to saying, “I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”
And this is why the last objection is just another way of not facing up to the problem. To say that “my brain” has decided to think or act in a particular way, whether consciously or not, and my freedom consists in this, is to ignore the very reason why people believe in free will in the first place: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.
Indeed. I’ve done quite a bit of reading about free will in the past few months, and the literature is characterized by two strains: it’s tendentious, motivated by the fact that many philosophers find the idea of determinism distasteful. And it also tries to solve the problem by redefining “free will” so that it becomes far removed from what most people think it is (see my discussion of Dan Dennett’s Freedom Evolves (http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/did-freedom-evolve/)).


If “free will” is to mean anything, it must mean what Sam insists it does: the notion that we could have done or thought something other than we did. There is not the slightest evidence for that proposition, and there is plenty of evidence against it, including the palpable fact that thoughts and choices arise from a materialistic body and brain, demonstrations that physical and chemical manipulations of our brain can change our thoughts and actions, and recent experiments showing that our decisions are made in our brain well before we feel that we’ve made a choice.


How can we ever show that we could have “chosen” other than we did? We can’t. And if we can’t, then assertions about free will leave the realm of the empirical and enter the realm of philosophy. There is no free will.http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/theres-no-free-will/

[Broletariat]

free-will is non-sense, so is determinism.

[Octavian]

This only further shows that free will is irrelevant.

[trivas7]

Free will is indeed irrelevant to those for whom choices are irrelevant. I, however, chose not to count myself as one of these.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

I chose not to read the article, is that free will?

[cogar66]

>mfw people actually believe in Free Will

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fUzorZk31Ss/S667elW2FzI/AAAAAAAAGD4/HeiOLBmOd-0/s1600/470x400castro_cigar.jpg

[Thirsty Crow]

Free will is indeed irrelevant to those for whom choices are irrelevant. I, however, chose not to count myself as one of these.
That's not what the concept of free will entails.

[W1N5T0N]

i have the free will not to become a fascists and succumb to capitalist consumer-drug society.

[ComradeMan]

What a load of over-intellectualising bullshit.

Who cares?

Surf's up.....

[Franz Fanonipants]

why is Sam Harris so often worshipped here

[AnonymousOne]

I like Sam Harris, but I don't think he argues very coherently against Free Will. At best he simply questions whether it's possible that we can ever know if we have free will or not. I really wish Sam would stop making such outrageous claims that are fundamentally unprovable.

If you are interested in Free Will, consider Daniel Dennet's book where he does a fairly interesting thought experiment about how free will can exist in a limited sense in a compatabilitist framework. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett#Free_will

But eventually, I think we come to the point where it stops mattering. So what everything is determined and my actions are the result of biochemical processes and not free will, that still doesn't change my life or anyone else's.

[W1N5T0N]

People, seriously? Free Will exists. And yes, you can be pre-disposed to certain things.
However, are they mutually exlusive? Thinking in absolutes is pretty ignorant.

As Eli said: You always have a choice.

[Franz Fanonipants]

People, seriously? Free Will exists. And yes, you can be pre-disposed to certain things.
However, are they mutually exlusive? Thinking in absolutes is pretty ignorant.

As Eli said: You always have a choice.

Anti-free will stuff is a major hallmark of certain portions of "New" Atheism. Hence people posting a dude who believes that Buddhism is ok while Christianity is the devil.

On Revleft. dot org

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I don't believe in free will, but I do think autonomy exists. We have the ability to rationally analyse means and ends in an empirical fashion even if we don't always use it. Respecting autonomy means maximising our ability to think rationally when appropriate, so that the better part of our decisions are more closely in accordance with reality.

That's why education is so important, and why we shouldn't cloud our minds with religious crap, no matter the flavour. There's no supernatural justice in the world, whether it's God's wrath or karma, so the responsibility lies with us to get things right in the vast and marvellously indifferent universe in which we find ourselves.

We're a bubbling confluence of memes, genes, and developmental artefacts, performing a complex reactive dance in a vast dynamic ocean of environmental influences. It might be possible, if one had several galactic masses worth of computer, to predict the entire life of a particular combination of sperm and egg. It could be easier than that, and the question would still be moot, because the magnitude of the variables would be beyond our ability to compute on time.

Having said that though, there are clear cases of people being convinced to act against their own interests, like working class Americans voting for Tea Party candidates. If free will exists, why is it so easily hijacked?

[Pirx]

The current discussion of free will, started by some attention addicted brain researchers, has a certain totalitarian smack. Of course decisions always have a cause, so in this hindsight will is not “free”. My understanding of free will is:
Normally People are able to carry out complex decisions. They can learn and take new information into account.
People have their own means and do not like to be manipulated or lied to.
In this respect we have of course a free will and the right to defend it.

[trivas7]

]

How are decisions possible without free will?

[Desperado]

Hands up if you love silly linguistic games which involve nothing but disagreements over definitions which relate not one bit to how the words are used in every day life and reveal nothing new to us about reality.

[AnonymousOne]

How are decisions possible without free will?

The same way the AI makes a decision in a video game.

[Judicator]

What a load of over-intellectualising bullshit.

Who cares?

Surf's up.....

Successful attacks on free will completely destroy the notion that someone should be punished simply because they chose to do something wrong.



People, seriously? Free Will exists. And yes, you can be pre-disposed to certain things.
However, are they mutually exlusive? Thinking in absolutes is pretty ignorant.

As Eli said: You always have a choice.

Why bother even reading the OP and responding to its points when a string of cliches will suffice?

[Kamos]

But what if the punishment itself is predetermined? And then said punishment makes the other guy think, "Perhaps I shouldn't do that again", and in fact, it's just an abstract fate driving him to do something else next time? The whole debate is irrelevant and it's probably easier to disprove the existence of any given god than to prove either free will or determinism exists.

[Judicator]

But what if the punishment itself is predetermined? And then said punishment makes the other guy think, "Perhaps I shouldn't do that again", and in fact, it's just an abstract fate driving him to do something else next time? The whole debate is irrelevant and it's probably easier to disprove the existence of any given god than to prove either free will or determinism exists.

Plenty of people believe people should be punished just for doing something wrong, independent of any deterrent effect that may result. If people lack free will, this is a very poor justification for punishment. Without free will, nobody is really morally responsible for anything so it changes your approach to criminals quite a bit.

[minimali]

Free will – a choice with in a confined structure…not much - but not nothing

[Lynx]

A definition of free will that describes rocks and humans as having no free will is useless. It's like saying the universe is made up of stuff.

[Decolonize The Left]

free-will is non-sense, so is determinism.

This.

The whole free will vs. determinism argument is tiring as both philosophies make far too many assumptions about the series of cause and effect, including the fundamental assumption that such a series materially exists and can be qualified and quantified by human beings.


Free will is indeed irrelevant to those for whom choices are irrelevant. I, however, chose not to count myself as one of these.

free will =/= choice

But good try. :thumbdown:

- August

[DinodudeEpic]

An abstract fate can only exist in the form of a Orwellian-Dictator-God-Thingy that controls everything piece of the universe. We all make decisions, thus free-will is proved. Even if those decisions came from some mechanism in our body/brain, it is still free-will in that we decide what we do. With ourselves being the body.

Anyways, what force would control our decisions besides our brain? If you can't say it, then you have proved free-will.....FOR NOW!

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

An abstract fate can only exist in the form of a Orwellian-Dictator-God-Thingy that controls everything piece of the universe. We all make decisions, thus free-will is proved. Even if those decisions came from some mechanism in our body/brain, it is still free-will in that we decide what we do. With ourselves being the body.

Anyways, what force would control our decisions besides our brain? If you can't say it, then you have proved free-will.....FOR NOW!

Actually no, the burden of proof is on those who believe in free will. To simply assume that it exists unless proven otherwise is to beg the question.

[cogar66]

An abstract fate can only exist in the form of a Orwellian-Dictator-God-Thingy that controls everything piece of the universe. We all make decisions, thus free-will is proved. Even if those decisions came from some mechanism in our body/brain, it is still free-will in that we decide what we do. With ourselves being the body.

Anyways, what force would control our decisions besides our brain? If you can't say it, then you have proved free-will.....FOR NOW!

1. No. The actual idea is cause and effect. A leads to B which leads to C and so on.
2. Do we shape our body?
3. Do we shape our brain?
4. What does?
5. Do we control that?
6. If not, how is our will free?