Free Will?

[4thInter]

Currently I'm pondering if we has a species have free will? Little help?

[Futility Personified]

I'd say no.

We exist as a series of compulsions and impulses birthed from our primitive instincts and material conditions.

The disposition that I possess merely by existing as an entity on revleft is a result of certain triggers in my life that led me here. We take conscious decisions, but what encourages us to make those decisions is an overlapping series of circumstances that in fact narrows our options down til what happens is an inevitability.

Ultimately, if you were aware of the determinist nature of the universe and wanted to buck the trend by some act of free will that would run completely contrary to everything that led to it, you'd have some kind of oppositional psychology that would be formed by everything in your life that preceded that point.

[Redistribute the Rep]

B F Skinner, the most cited psychologist according to a 2002 survey of scientific journals, didn't think so. I can't remember the title but he wrote a book about it that was pretty controversial.

[RedWorker]

It depends on how "free will" is defined and determinism.

Determinism holds that, for any action, including human action, there was an environment that would result in only that action being produced. In the same way 2+2 is always 4, and that a computer running the same code will always do the same action, and that an object falling will always perfectly follow the law of gravitiy, determinism holds that for any action produced in any moment, only that action could be produced, because the universe is run by laws which have an input and an output.

We have free will in that we choose what we do, in the same way that a robot chooses what it does - but for any action that we performed, we could only have chosen that, according to determinism.

We are biological robots. :D

Compatibilism holds that determinism is true, yet we DO HAVE free will.
Incompatibilism holds that determinism is false, and that we do NOT have free will.
Libertarianism (in the metaphysical meaning of the word, not political) holds that determinism is false and that we DO HAVE free will.

[motion denied]

Free will is free of what?

[exeexe]

Someone told me to write this. Help me!

[exeexe]

Free will is free of what?
From external decision making.

If a terrorist takes someone as hostage and tell their hostage to do something the hostage has no free will until they try to escape..

[Comrade Jacob]

We never truly have free will because of material conditions and their affect on our decision-making. (IMO)

[Xena Warrior Proletarian]

If there is no free will or human agency, can rapists and fascists be held responsible for their actions?

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

No offense to OP, but I hate this question. It is absolutely meaningless. What the hell is free will anyway? You could argue yes or no from any number of philosophical standpoints, but in reality it really is meaningless and the question doesn't make any sense. Whether or not free will exists (which again, what does that mean?) has no bearing on any outcome of our lives.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

B F Skinner, the most cited psychologist according to a 2002 survey of scientific journals, didn't think so. I can't remember the title but he wrote a book about it that was pretty controversial.

Skinner<333 :wub:

Me personally no, I don't believe 'free will' exists, no. I do believe we choose our actions but said choice isn't actually freedom of 'Will.' Milgram has a quote I like, if I can paraphrase it right, something like "you can't judge a man, more the situations that man finds himself."

[Decolonize The Left]

From external decision making.

What is the difference between "internal" and "external" and how do you know when one is in play and the other isn't?

[Decolonize The Left]

Also, what is a "will" and why is it a thing (which can be free or bonded, like a horse or a kite)?

[exeexe]

What is the difference between "internal" and "external" and how do you know when one is in play and the other isn't?
When i wrote


Someone told me to write this. Help me!

It was just irony, but it was an internal decision to write it. I took the decision to write that all by myself so it was internal.

[Decolonize The Left]

It was just irony, but it was an internal decision to write it. I took the decision to write that all by myself so it was internal.

So if two people agree to go get sandwiches for lunch that's an external decision (as each did not "take the decision to get sandwiches all by themselves")?

[Scheveningen]

I'd argue it's not rationally possible to unequivocally "solve" the problem of the existence or non-existence of the free will.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

In my opinion, all humans are free to choose. But no choice happens in a vacuum.

[Scheveningen]

The concept of 'free will' postulates that individual actions are not necessary (at least two alternative 'possibilities' always exist, and only one becomes actuality) and that whether a given possibility is actualised is consequential to a 'decision' of the agent.

A similar definition would be that if 'free will'; exists, then actions are always the product of 'choice' (as opposed to 'chance' or 'necessity' or what not).
So if two people agree to go get sandwiches for lunch that's an external decision (as each did not &quot;take the decision to get sandwiches all by themselves&quot;)? If you believe that each of them could've refused to get sandwiches for lunch with the other person, but chose to get them nonetheless, then the actions of both people would be 'free'.
I don't think that interaction is relevant for free will theorists.

[cyu]

If there is no free will or human agency, can rapists and fascists be held responsible for their actions?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_determinism

If choice is indeed impossible, then it would be incorrect to hold anyone morally responsible for his or her actions.

Those hard determinists who defend ethical realism would object to the premise that contra-causal free will is necessary for ethics. Those who are also ethically naturalistic may also point out that there are good reasons to punish criminals: it is a chance to modify their behaviour, or their punishment can act as a deterrent for others who would otherwise act in the same manner. The hard determinist could even argue that this understanding of the true and various causes of a psychopath's behaviour, for instance, allow them to respond even more reasonably or compassionately.

Hard determinists acknowledge that humans do, in some sense, 'choose', or deliberate – although in a way that obeys natural laws. For example, a hard determinist might see humans as a sort of thinking machines, but believe it is inaccurate to say they 'came to a decision' or 'chose'.

If a boulder rolling down a hill doesn't have free will, one might argue that it would still make sense for people to take action to prevent the boulder from crushing a village.

[Ven0m]

i think oof free will as quantam openness wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

[LovingCommie]

Read Sam Harris's book "Free Will". Modern phycology is only helping prove this old philosophical argument.

[Comrade #138672]

The assumption of the existence of free will - in the sense of determinism - is not necessary for ethics, or to hold people responsible for their actions.

[DigitalBluster]

Currently I'm pondering if we has a species have free will? Little help?

I don't believe in free will. No one can tell me where it's supposed to have come from, aside from "god" or "emergence" or some other non answer.


If there is no free will or human agency, can rapists and fascists be held responsible for their actions?

Yes, they're "responsible" as the most proximal cause of their actions. There are many distal causes as well, and all should be addressed, but the proximal cause is the one we can lock up or do battle with.

[Slavic]

I'd say no.

We exist as a series of compulsions and impulses birthed from our primitive instincts and material conditions.

The disposition that I possess merely by existing as an entity on revleft is a result of certain triggers in my life that led me here. We take conscious decisions, but what encourages us to make those decisions is an overlapping series of circumstances that in fact narrows our options down til what happens is an inevitability.

Ultimately, if you were aware of the determinist nature of the universe and wanted to buck the trend by some act of free will that would run completely contrary to everything that led to it, you'd have some kind of oppositional psychology that would be formed by everything in your life that preceded that point.

Pretty much my exact view of free will and determinism. Everything in existence has proceded from a cause-effect relationship. Every action is predicated by a cause and can not be "willed" into being from a nonexistent entity.

[Loony Le Fist]

Even computer programs have a rudimentary free will, to use the term rather loosely. A computer program can select a particular action based on a set of inputs. Because the input to a general computer program is unknowable in advance, the output of a computer program is also unpredictable (in general) without executing it. That is a very informal distillation of the Church-Turing (CTC) conjecture.

It is possible to analyse someone's brain with a fMRI machine, while they are making a decision, and predict what they will decide, before (roughly half to a quarter of a second) the person is even consciously aware of their decision with about 75% accuracy.

Based on both the CTC and this empirical observation about humans, compatibilism seems to represent reality. People have the free-will to make decisions by drawing inferences based on previous experiences. However, those experiences will delimitate what particular inferences and decisions will be made. Nonetheless, brains being statistical inference machines, are really good at synergising, and therefore produce solutions that are greater than just simple set operations on a collection of knowledge like a database query. Databases can never produce a result that transcends the datasets involved in a query like we can. Of course, we are still limited, by CTC just like every other system that can be reduced to a Turing machine.

[Dialectical_Materialist]

From external decision making.

If a terrorist takes someone as hostage and tell their hostage to do something the hostage has no free will until they try to escape..



The hostage can always blink or twitch his bottock cheeks as he chooses?

(Hi Sartre)

[Rugged Collectivist]

All of your actions are largely determined by two factors. Genetic makeup and material conditions. Since you have no control over these factors it follows that you also have no control over your life. I don't think we necessarily should act as if there is no free will just because there isn't. We perceive free will, in the same way an amputee might perceive pain in their missing limb. The cause is absurd but the pain is real.


If there is no free will or human agency, can rapists and fascists be held responsible for their actions?

Yes, in the same way a giant boulder hurtling toward a town might be held responsible for it's actions. It didn't cause itself to fall but it's going to cause a lot of misery anyway so we should still try to stop it.