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Is free will an illusion?

Is 'free will' an illsuion?

  • Of course

    Votes: 9 27.3%
  • It's real

    Votes: 13 39.4%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 9 27.3%
  • Don't care

    Votes: 6 18.2%

  • Total voters
    33
See posts #191 and #198. I'm done with your silly games for now. I will respond if you actually have evidence to show. If not, then just keep repeating yourself without offering said evidence, if that is what makes you happy.
Simple questions, my man. It's fair not to want to have my time wasted, no? Just a simple question. It's all I ask.
 
What this neuroscience -- physical movements being decided before you are consciously aware they are happening, being able to predict choices up to 11 seconds before they are made, etc -- does not account for is planning.

We plan. We make plans; we then follow them or diverge from them. So the next step is studying this planning.
 
What this neuroscience -- physical movements being decided before you are consciously aware they are happening, being able to predict choices up to 11 seconds before they are made, etc -- does not account for is planning.

We plan. We make plans; we then follow them or diverge from them. So the next step is studying this planning.
Definitely. I dont believe libertarian free will exists but there are certainly shortcomings to the study you reference which ive heard much about so i dont doubt you have one.
 
Ah, but that I have to disagree with.

If mathematics were just some mumbo jumbo in our heads, it could not be used to predict that certain observations will be made if an experiment is conducted in a certain way, or in the case of Einstein, if you can look at light shining around a strong enough gravity source with a strong enough telescope. But you can.

If mathematics were purely in our heads - if it were just some bullshit we make up to describe what we've seen - then you couldn't make successful further predictions based on it with any greater accuracy than pure chance.

There is a clear and direct relationship between mathematics and behavior in this universe.





That said.......I'm not sure this means I'm saying that this is a "clockwork universe". The entire premise of physics/mathematics is that in specified conditions, you can predict the behavior of whatever experimental objects you have set up. It's not built to take account of the potential behavior of beings with free will.

I'd have to go back to refresh on what exactly is meant by "clockwork universe". I seem to remember Leibniz and the idea of the world as a great predictable machine, which does not require the input of a God. It sounds like people extrapolate out from that to suppose one could predict the beginning and end of the universe from any set of points in it. If so, yes, free will cannot exist, because if it does the end of the universe is different if I walk across my room right now, if I drive to Alabama on a lark, or if I dump a glass of water on my head and stay seated.

I'd go with hybrid (unless this turns out to be what 'non-clockwork' means): Mathematics-physics is proven clockwork. Introduce life, the less predictable system-wide events become, dependent on just how much autonomy the life in question has. Take a closed experimental system that can house humans. Put a few types of object in there, food source, water source, and either certain bacteria or humans. The end-state of everything in the system will be a hell of a lot easier to predict in the bacteria experiment than the human experiment.

I don't see why anyone should have to choose between pure clockwork and pure non-clockwork. It's a mix.
Mathematics is a system we came up with, much like the scientific method. Its just the most useful system.
 
It only appears to be a choice.

The "choices" are already known and predetermined in advance.

True. Unfortunately, many seem to let emotions rule over their rational thinking.
I have a lot of doubts all choices have been pre determined in advance. Lots of people say this but ive never seen them empirically justify this in such a way that we can show beyond post hoc rationalizations.

I dont believe the world of minority
Report is actually realistic.
 
I have a lot of doubts all choices have been pre determined in advance. Lots of people say this but ive never seen them empirically justify this in such a way that we can show beyond post hoc rationalizations.
If God set the universe in motion with full knowledge of how things play out in advance, then God has predetermined how things go, including our choices. Basically, God says we're going yo do something, and we do it as God determined. There's no possibility of doing anything different. Unless God is wrong.
 
If God set the universe in motion with full knowledge of how things play out in advance, then God has predetermined how things go, including our choices. Basically, God says we're going yo do something, and we do it as God determined. There's no possibility of doing anything different. Unless God is wrong.
If we have no free will then the concept of sin is absurd and illogical because if we cannot choose our behavior then we logically cannot be blamed for choices/actions that we had no choice in, even by the churches logic. If their god is not omniscient then he cannot possibly answer silent prayers or punish greed or lust of the heart. Somebody is caught is a very nasty logical and theological conundrum. Commerce the nonsense apologetics.............

Physics suggest that free will may not be possible.
 
If we have no free will then the concept of sin is absurd and illogical because if we cannot choose our behavior then we logically cannot be blamed for choices/actions that we had no choice in, even by the churches logic. If their god is not omniscient then he cannot possibly answer silent prayers or punish greed or lust of the heart. Somebody is caught is a very nasty logical and theological conundrum. Commerce the nonsense apologetics.............

Physics suggest that free will may not be possible.
Sin is absurd and illogical regardless of free will. It's just a silly religious concept to identify what is subjectively considered bad behavior and to better control people.
 
You typed that sentence as an automaton? Really?
It's plausible that autonomy and automation are differing perspectives of the same cause-and-effect sequence, one as an experienced feedback loop, the other as an inference from observation.
 
Mathematics is a system we came up with, much like the scientific method. Its just the most useful system.
Another take is that while mathematics, the language, is an emergent property of communicative complexity (maybe even a way of saying qualia), mathematical information is a property adherent to all known phemonema.
 
I know this subject has been brought up many times but I wanted to give it another stab.

If free will is an illusion, we most likely will never know it. Who or what could possibly calculate every predetermined cause and effect? You'd have to know every single action and reaction that happened in the universe on a subatomic level, which is beyond even the most powerful computers.

From the beginning to the end of time, Einstein envisioned a fixed, 'block universe.' Meaning that anyone outside of time/space could view existence, as a whole, from start to finish. So, even if from the first two particle collisions everything is determined afterward, it still appears as free will as far as we can tell.

Feel free to correct the above statements if they're wrong. But did you decide to do it or are you compelled by destiny?



-- The difficulty in explaining the enigma of free will to those unfamiliar with the subject isn’t that it’s complex or obscure. It’s that the experience of possessing free will – the feeling that we are the authors of our choices – is so utterly basic to everyone’s existence that it can be hard to get enough mental distance to see what’s going on. Suppose you find yourself feeling moderately hungry one afternoon, so you walk to the fruit bowl in your kitchen, where you see one apple and one banana. As it happens, you choose the banana. But it seems absolutely obvious that you were free to choose the apple – or neither, or both – instead. That’s free will: were you to rewind the tape of world history, to the instant just before you made your decision, with everything in the universe exactly the same, you’d have been able to make a different one.--
Three things to say about that. And I know Kant already showed that the Determinism argument fails (in his ANTINOMIES)
1) If there is no free will there is no mind or rationality
" man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will."

2) One could not have the idea even of free will without a free will

3) It makes the most large things in civilization incomprehensible
Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain.
Why would someone , whether Jesus or Socrates or Kant, deterministically be driven to state utter falsehoods.

I tell you, after long investigation, you are denying REASON before you deny Will. Because will follows reason.
 
Three things to say about that. And I know Kant already showed that the Determinism argument fails (in his ANTINOMIES)
1) If there is no free will there is no mind or rationality
" man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will."

2) One could not have the idea even of free will without a free will

3) It makes the most large things in civilization incomprehensible
Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain.
Why would someone , whether Jesus or Socrates or Kant, deterministically be driven to state utter falsehoods.

I tell you, after long investigation, you are denying REASON before you deny Will. Because will follows reason.
Regardless of whether there's free will or not, we're still held responsible for our actions.
 
I have had a great life. At one point, I was almost somebody. In the 1980s, I was selected to coach baseball in the former Soviet Union. I could tell you so many stories about what that was like. I'll save you the time and boredom. Instead, I'll tell you one. I had been coaching a team in Lithuania for about a week when one of the players came to me and wanted to talk. He had been a track star. I asked him why he was trying to learn how to play baseball. He told me that his family had been taken away from him and that if he did not improve as a baseball player, he would never get to see them again. He then asked me to make him a great baseball player.

We have so many freedoms in the USA. Our free will enables us to become whatever we wish to be. No one said that this is easy or a given. Instead, a person has the free will to live their dreams or to give up on them. I'll wrap this up by saying the both my mom and dad were functionally illiterate. I became a teacher. I love books and learning. I became a teacher. My dad came to visit after my mom had passed. I noticed that he had pulled his truck over to the side at the beginning of the block. Fearing that something bad had happened, I ran down to see why he was pulled over. My dad was choked up crying. I asked what was wrong. He pointed to my house and said, "My son lives in that house." That doesn't mean anything to any of you but I once lived in a 10x15 one-room sharecropper's shack. Seven of us lived in it. I now live in a house that has 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a kitchen both upstairs and downstairs and a deck out back that is screened in and huge. I had the free will to live my dream.
 
How can we be held responsible if we have no free will? Our actions would be outside out control.
Cause and effect is the reason we have free will.
 
Cause and effect is the reason we have free will.
We have free will because we are conscious, sentient creatures. Cause & effect might affect the choices we make.
 
I most definitely believe libertarian free will doesnt exist at all but hard determinism just doesnt seem to be realistic.
 
Cause and effect is the reason we have free will.
If anything, cause and effect puts a cap/limit on our free will...
 
YOU have to realize that if it is an illusion, your question can't stand at all because you had no freedom in asking it.
 
YOU have to realize that if it is an illusion, your question can't stand at all because you had no freedom in asking it.
Then it was predestined by your supposed god to be asked, if your god exists, which there is no objective evidence of.
 
Then it was predestined by your supposed god to be asked, if your god exists, which there is no objective evidence of.
Then it was predestined by your supposed god to be asked, if your god exists, which there is no objective evidence of.
NO, then it could not have been predetermined. THat is what follows.
And your not opposing with objective evidence of NOT-X leaves X untouched, logically

And just one more thing if you can understand it: ISn't it perfectlly contradictory to want evidence when you say we have no free will??

Reason actually stands on the very thing you deny !!!
man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will.

See your very reasoning PROVES you are WRONG :)
 
Sorry. Mathematics using absolute numbers.
And even without that stipulation thrown in, I would still disagree with your assessment. Animals estimate stuff all the time without the use of math, and obviously their judgement is not completely random.
Math simulates reality, reality does not simulate math. Physics > math.
Math is just logic- like the logic board in a computer. Sure it's a very powerful tool; but it's not reality. It takes a bunch of inputs, manipulates them, often in very sophisticated ways, and comes up with an output. But it's not reality. If you give it wrong input, it will give you incorrect output, having nothing to do with reality: like computer scientists say: "garbage in, garbage out".
 
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