Free Will and Determinism

[Socrates and friends]

Can the philosophers among you share your views with me?

[Primorum Libertorum]

"Free Will" is nonsense. Ask the people who use this term to define it, and you will see that they most often cling to a superstitious belief in an immortal soul which gets supposedly adulterated by biological and social influences, also known as "living". In fact, they are merely looking for an excuse not to take personal responsibility for their actions. That is what they are really talking about, "Freedom from Responsibility". My advice: Distrust anyone who uses the term, and refuse to discuss it before he has defined it.

[Socrates and friends]

The definition of a free will which I have accepted is:
"The freedom of an individual to act as they wish when presented with a choice". I think its a fair one.

I am not religious myself, but I found what you are saying logically incorrect. If one was to believe in an all-knowing God, this God will be fully aware of their future actions, hence they have no say in how they will act and so they have no free will.

What I want to know is whether Free Will, as I have defined it, exists in the scientific world. Because if the rule that every action has a reaction is right, every single event was caused by a previous event, which means that any choice that an individual could make is only an illusion of a choice since the random chain of events which led up to the situation eliminates any choice happening at all.

Do you follow?

[Primorum Libertorum]

Well, what criteria define a choice? To quote from another thread:

Free will is the ability to make choices - to be presented with a situation, analyse it, develop a concept of your various options, compare them against your personal morality and then make a decision.

But all of these elements have causes. There is a cause for finding yourself in the situation,for the available choices, for your ability to analyze, even for your preferences. So how can someone who likes strawberry icecream fervently make a "free choice" at the ice cream parlor? Isn't he strongly biased towards choosing strawberry? Yes, he may choose chocolate, but he won't. And if he does so simply to prove me wrong, then there still was a cause: My influence on him.

In short: If there is a cause, can there be freedom? People usually deny this, and that leads to the radical conclusion that anything except non-causal thoughts are unfree. But what exactly distinguishes "non-causal thoughts" from "complete lunacy"? Or isn't there any difference meant to be? The terms and even concepts of "freedom", "choice" etc are loaden with unspoken presumptions, emotions, yearnings. It is necessary to reveal them in order to use the words truthfully and apply the ideas correctly.

[A Ant]

To a point. For example, I can choose whether to have bacon or pizza for dinner. I can't choose to sprout wings and fly to the moon.

True free will would require omnipotence at least.

[Angleter]

I believe we have the free will to post things in wrong fora.

[Unibot II]

I've made a wager. If there is Free Will and I know there is Free Will, I will do every I will to do because I know I can do it if I have the means and the determination to do so, if there is Free Will but I think the world is fatalistic, I may permit evils in the world by inaction. If the world is deterministic, and I think there's Free Will, nothing is different, I was always meant to live a lie -- so resistance is futile. There is no payoff for guessing the world is deterministic and being right because the world is the same no matter, but there is a payoff if you assume the world has free will, and you turn out to be right in the end.

[Desinokara]

Free will, the ability to choose freely from ones preferences. Example; I like icecream and I like chokolade. If presented with the option of choosing between one of these I have my free will to choose what I at the moment thought to be most in accordance with my preference. If I didn´t have free will, then I would not have the feeling of a choice, but would feel absolutely compelled to choose either chokolade or icecream. Is it then indetermisme what I decide? I would say no based on intuitive logic. I might the day before have had the same choice, and chosen the opposite and therefore had a wish to try the other flavour, but this doesn´t mean that I do not have free will. I "could" have choosen the same, but I picked the opposite.

So what is free will in a determined metaphysical universe? I would say that it is a feeling among other feelings. Pain, pleasure, anger and joy are all feelings that I have. They are peronal experiences in most cases, and so is the feeling of free will. Would we argue that pain doesn´t exist? Hardly, as most people have had personal experiences with pain, and the same goes for free will. I might not tell whether you choice is based on a feeling of free will or just instinct, but it is equally hard to define anothers feeling of joy and anger. They might be acting it, but that doesn´t change that I have had the feeling myself and therefore have first hand experience with the feeling of free will. If a person will claim that they have no free will, then they most bear that on their shoulders, but I have yet to meet someone who would claim that he didn´t have choice between two preferences of equal size.

[A Ant]

I've made a wager. If there is Free Will and I know there is Free Will, I will do every I will to do because I know I can do it if I have the means and the determination to do so, if there is Free Will but I think the world is fatalistic, I may permit evils in the world by inaction. If the world is deterministic, and I think there's Free Will, nothing is different, I was always meant to live a lie -- so resistance is futile. There is no payoff for guessing the world is deterministic and being right because the world is the same no matter, but there is a payoff if you assume the world has free will, and you turn out to be right in the end.

Unibot's Wager? I must say I like it.

[Regnu di Venezia]

Can the philosophers among you share your views with me?

Free will is absolute. We are not bound by anything; to those that say that environment or genetics determine everything we do, I would ask them to make 100% accurate predictions about someone's life from birth to death. Impossible. Even if you want to consider environmental influences and/or genetics to cause all of our actions, the fact that we can't make accurate predictions based on those factors makes the whole point moot; it's all retrospective speculation. You and I are completely in control of everything we consciously do, there is no denying that simple fact.

[Primorum Libertorum]

I "could" have choosen the same, but I picked the opposite.

Really? In order to prove that, you would have to actually pick ice cream. But then you wouldn't have proved that you could have picked chocolate. It seems impossible to prove that you "could" have acted differently.

We can set up an experiment though. Imagine this situation were a neural simulation, and after every test the memories of it would be erased and you would face the test again. Now imagine the results were that you would always choose chocolate if the variables (mood, setting, price etc) are the same. Where is your choice now?

Or is choice just another expression for "being biologically able to do something"? That would largely eliminate the element of cause. Does that seem right?

[Sedgistan]

Firstly, this debate should be in the General forum. Secondly, if you want to discuss something there, you have to develop your OP - provide some more information about the topic, and most importantly, give some commentary on it, including your own opinion.