Does free will exist?

[Agayek]

You might be thinking I'm crazy at this point. "Of course free will exists," you say, "only I am in control of my actions." So let me outline this with a small analogy.

Right now, simply by using a website like this [http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html] I can discover the exact time that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. For example, tomorrow morning in Sydney, Australia, the sun will rise at exactly 6:13am, no earlier, no later. The point I'm trying to make here is that an event, such as the rising of the sun, is totally predictable by analysis of avaliable data like time of year, latitude and longditude, etc.

So let's just say I had the technology at this very moment to take a snapshot of every function of your body. For example, I can watch the activity of every neuron in your brain, I am monitoring your blood sugar levels and oxygen saturation and everything that could possibly influnce the next thing you decide to do. Assuming I had the capability to interpret all of this data, I would be able to accurately predict your next move, as at a basic level we are all just a system of biological material after all.

So does this compromise the notion of free will? Discuss.

No. The problem with analyzing and predicting something in that way is that you won't actually know what they're about to do, until right before they actually do it. When they've made the conscious choice to do it.

Predictability does not limit free will in any way. At any point in time after they've prepared and begun to do something, they can change their minds and stop doing it if they wish.

It's what's lovely about being human; you are free to do anything you want to.

Okay, If free will is the ability to direct your own actions AND it always happens the way YOU would expect, and if it DOES exist, then I could go up to any random person, and say "Punch Me." and because it was ME who said it, and it was MY will, then it should happen.

But it might not. It all depends on the other person. There personalities and will.
So, depending on a role in life, you may or may not have free will.

Flawed logic is still logic, kiddies!

The problem there is that's not free will. Free will is the ability to choose. No more, no less.

 

[CoziestPigeon]

Your argument really isn't good. Because you can predict something that happens every single day with only slight variations that follow a pattern, you think free will doesn't exist?

 

[Cpt. Red]

"There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask "Why me?" and "What if?". When you look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions." ?Max Payne (in Max Payne 2)

So no...

 

[DoW Lowen]

No. There is no such thing as free will. Free will would suggest that one is able to do anything without consequences or ramifications. Free will would also suggest that there is no reason for an action. Everything in life is determined, not to be mistaken with pre-determined. This may sound odd but stick with me here, I'm not the best at giving an explanation but hopefully it makes sense...

If you believed in free will you can go up to any random person in the street and stab them. Then you could step away and say, "nope not guilty, it was free will". You would have no reason to stab the man, you just did because you could. Free will suggest you are in control of your actions but you are NOT guided by reasoning and the concept of choice which i will explain shortly.

If you are a determinist, you would stab that man because you had a reason. He had money, it was revenge, you caught him abusing your cat etc. If free will existed than that would mean that everybody is independent of each other and no actions are consequential to another person, because if everyone had free will than another person CANNOT effect the actions and outcomes of other people. A man who does not want to be stabbed can be stabbed against his will. Instead what people have is not free will but reasoning and choice.

One would argue that choice is free will. But it isn't. Free will is the ability to do anything regardless of the circumstance. And if one could do anything regardless of the situation at hand, they would only do it because there are low impact to no consequences. Choice is a product of a situation which limits what a person can do. And we may choose between those choices which are presented to us, we are free to decide whatever one we please, but in the end the decisions we make are not limitless and are not free from consequence.

Here's the kicker.

A person's reasoning makes all people determinist. Everything in the world has a cause and effect. There is nothing in the world that is exempt from the rule. Even if you don't know what the cause is, you know there is a cause. Because of this law, everything a person does creates and adds on to the chain. Every choice a person makes will ultimately directly or indirectly affect another decision in the future. Today you woke up and decided to get out of bed, that's because last night you decided to go to sleep, and you went to sleep because you did something that day to make you tired... keep going back and you'll reach back to the moment you were born.

Now what I'm getting at is, and this may seem like an outrageous concept, but say you are given option A and option B. What a person would normally do is grab all their knowledge, opinions, views and experience in their life and perhaps even others and weigh the two options up. Then let's assume you chose option A, you chose option A because of all those experiences you have so really, option B was never really an option. At every fork in the road, one can say that every path has been determined. Once again not pre-determined, different concept. So in a sense, one does not even really have choice. Don't believe me take this for example -

Have you ever made a choice in life that you regret? If you could go back right now with the knowledge you have you'd choose differently. BUT...

At that exact point in the time you made that choice based on your worldly experiences, and if you traveled back in time and had only the knowledge you knew at that exact moment and had no idea what the future consequences of your actions were, you'd make the exact same decision again and you'd end up exactly where you are right now. Life is determined, and I'm not saying it is because of some cosmic force, that's an entirely different debate, I'm saying there is no free will because humans have reasoning.

We use reasoning to assess a situation, we use reasoning to contemplate a desired outcome and work to make that outcome a reality. We use reasoning because if free will existed we would not need reasoning. And as i stated free will cannot exist if it impacts upon others, and therefore everybody's reasoning is different, people's views and actions may conflict.

There is no free will. Choice is simply an illusion, it is not a choice if the decision would've ready been made.

 

[Gitsnik]

No. There is no such thing as free will. Free will would suggest that one is able to do anything without consequences or ramifications.

It's late and I'm too sick to process the rest of this post, but that statement is fundamentally wrong - free will is not the ability to do anything without consequence or ramification - it is the ability to know those are the possibilities and do it anyway. Being "completely" free would imply your point, having free will is mine. I choose not to steal from people because I choose not to have to deal with the consequences - other people choose to steal from people because they choose to ignore the consequences.

A slight difference, but a significant one for the debate.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

we have reflexes on a preconscious level and bodily functions that drive desires such as the need for food and water, and there are some things we can't control (like we cant make our heart stop at will) but we can always control out own actions. Yes we have free will but that's not to say there aren't other influencing factors.

 

[DoW Lowen]

No. There is no such thing as free will. Free will would suggest that one is able to do anything without consequences or ramifications.

It's late and I'm too sick to process the rest of this post, but that statement is fundamentally wrong - free will is not the ability to do anything without consequence or ramification - it is the ability to know those are the possibilities and do it anyway. Being "completely" free would imply your point, having free will is mine. I choose not to steal from people because I choose not to have to deal with the consequences - other people choose to steal from people because they choose to ignore the consequences.

A slight difference, but a significant one for the debate.

Yes but dealing with the consequences is a factor you take into account when making that choice, please read the rest of my post and you will understand what I'm on about, even if it is insufferably long.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

No. There is no such thing as free will. Free will would suggest that one is able to do anything without consequences or ramifications. Free will would also suggest that there is no reason for an action. Everything in life is determined, not to be mistaken with pre-determined. This may sound odd but stick with me here, I'm not the best at giving an explanation but hopefully it makes sense...

If you believed in free will you can go up to any random person in the street and stab them. Then you could step away and say, "nope not guilty, it was free will". You would have no reason to stab the man, you just did because you could. Free will suggest you are in control of your actions but you are NOT guided by reasoning and the concept of choice which i will explain shortly.

If you are a determinist, you would stab that man because you had a reason. He had money, it was revenge, you caught him abusing your cat etc. If free will existed than that would mean that everybody is independent of each other and no actions are consequential to another person, because if everyone had free will than another person CANNOT effect the actions and outcomes of other people. A man who does not want to be stabbed can be stabbed against his will. Instead what people have is not free will but reasoning and choice.

One would argue that choice is free will. But it isn't. Free will is the ability to do anything regardless of the circumstance. and then guitarmaster quit reading because I obviously don't know what free will is.

What the hell does free will have to do with reasoning? to do something you have to have a want or desire to do it. If you have absolutely zero reasoning skills, you won't have any want or need to do ... ANYTHING. you would probably just sit in one place not breathing until you die because you couldn't reason that you need to do that to live and therefor going out of your way to breath wouldn't be in your best interest, let alone going out, getting a knife, and stabbing someone.

If I wanted to stab someone for no apparent or coherent reason I could. Granted, I would go to jail, but i am perfectly capable of doing it. Basically you're confusing free will with morality (or lack thereof) The reason most people dont go around stabbing random people is because logically it doesnt make sense. There's no real benefit to it if you have no prior motive, and it probably will invoke a dire consequence. Plus, whether you're religious or not, you have a basic sense of right and wrong. Obviously I wouldn't want to be stabbed so I can observe that some random guy on the street is a person, like myself, so i can reason that he probably doesn't want to be stabbed either, so I can put together that stabbing random people = bad.

Also, by your logic, free will does exist, but only in the minds of homicidal maniacs

 

[The Black Adder]

The sun is always rising somewhere. But of course there is free will. You made this topic, and I responded didn't I? I could have ignored it and posted somewhere else or not even have posted at all. The problem is that we have the ability we call free will, to make decisions and decided our own actions, but I go as far as to say that our will is not free and that we are are in constant chains created by our society that dictate our actions and thoughts and thus we will never truly be free until we escape the restrictions and corruptions of society. You may think, for example, that what you do on a regular basis is part of your free will but it has been programmed into you. Same things with your likes and dislikes. You've been "brainwashed" by your family, friends, teachers and most of all your government to think and act a certain way. So man's will cannot be free until he removes the burden of society and makes a return to nature.

 

[Mozared]

Essentially, the question the OP is asking is "Do we have something higher [a soul] 'above' our brains that rationalized all our actions". I don't really think so. Everything in life can be biologically explained, it only makes sense that us humans react to the stimuli we recieve. On the other hand though, it would be kind of curious that our brains are smart enough to realize that our brains are smart enough. If this were true without a 'soul', computers could one day come completely to life. On the other hand, come to think of it, they might, in fact.
...
Stop messing with my head!

 

[hubbel]

Here's what I think.
Your brain is "you", right? It controls everything "you" do.
If you (your brain) would have to make a choice it would always do the same thing in the exact same situation.
So if you knew everything about how a persons brain worked and every single thing that influence that brain, you could predict the choice.
As for the homocidal maniac, what influences his brain? If you knew that, you would know what his brain would choose to do.
It's all just a giant web of everything working together.

Of course we can't know how everything works, it could just be a pony controlling everything you do.

 

[Echo3Delta]

Someone's been watching The Matrix...

 

[Selvalros]

While I argue that everything is a product of causality, including our actions, I still believe that we possess free will. However, we do not possess free will as one traditionally sees it. At the very onset of our lives we are slaves to causality, believing that we are making real choices but we are simply making choices based on desires and instincts, influenced totally and utterly by the actions of those around us, acting without cause or reason. It is only once we reach an age that we truly understand how enslaved we are that we may become free. As Goethe once said, "no one is more enslaved then a man who believes himself to be free". When and only when we realize that we are slaves to causality can we truly start making real abstract decisions.

 

[Anarchemitis]

Well, let us extrapolate that there is no free will and that all actions are predesignated by an Artificial Intelligence program (Named such for simplicities sake). The AI program randomizes the 'Personality' by way of picking a number between 000,000,000,000 and 999,999,999,999 to feed into a giant math equation, the equation being the program. Given with that assumption that even if every human in, say, 6 centuries had their mind thoroughly cataloged (moreso than Current Science would be able to comprehend by a long shot), we'd still only have a small glimpse at how complicated the AI program would be.

Free will does exist in this Escapist's mind, but regardless what we do and how/why we chose it, God will have already figured out what will happen, and have orchestrated existence to flow in a manner that will result in his glory.

 

[Mozared]

But what if you'd get the idea to punch yourself out of the blue? I'm sure that has happened to people before, and I can't really say such a decision is made on desires and instincts. Is it made on something we don't know yet? Or is it 'mental diseases' that conform free will here?

 

[Danny Ocean]

Being able to predict what someone does doesn't mean they don't have free will. Let's say that somehow you managed to take control of their motor functions and then made them move their hand, then they have no free will. Simply saying that they'll raise their hand if you tell them to with a gun to their head isn't denying free will, it's highlighting predictability.

 

[Yegargeburble]

I've always thought life to be a giant game of 'The Sims'. I don't think we are in control of our lives. I believe in Destiny...

This idea makes me intensely uncomfortable.

I kind of like the idea of life being a giant game of the Sims, as long as my creator doesn't force me do anything that will kill me, like use fireworks indoors...

 

[CapnGod]

Ah, Baron D'Holbach vs. Jean Paul Sartre. Determinism vs. Free Will.

Frankly, I'm fairly certain I fall more on D'Holbach's side of the argument, because, whether you know it or not, you're a machine. A very, very complex machine, perhaps, but a machine nonetheless. You run on chemicals. Increase one here, decrease one there, and you function differently. You think you have free will, but you are governed by physical laws the same as everything else. There are just a lot more factors influencing what we do.

It's an interesting debate, and there's more to it (obviously), but you should look at a summary of those two philosophers. Or, you could start by checking out this little tidbit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_and_determinism#Determinism_and_emergent_behaviour

 

[Trifer420]

Ah, Baron D'Holbach vs. Jean Paul Sartre. Determinism vs. Free Will.

Frankly, I'm fairly certain I fall more on D'Holbach's side of the argument, because, whether you know it or not, you're a machine. A very, very complex machine, perhaps, but a machine nonetheless. You run on chemicals. Increase one here, decrease one there, and you function differently. You think you have free will, but you are governed by physical laws the same as everything else. There are just a lot more factors influencing what we do.

It's an interesting debate, and there's more to it (obviously), but you should look at a summary of those two philosophers. Or, you could start by checking out this little tidbit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_and_determinism#Determinism_and_emergent_behaviour

This^

what people commonly think as free will nowadays just seems like "free will", like choosing how you go about your life, pursuit of happiness..blah..blah, I'm not going into more examples because even in North Korea people know the kind of free will I'm talking about.

but it boils down to your predisposition and your conditioning.for example, Since you were young you were taught that you should always be good and what not and that gets ingrained into your skull and the next time you choose to act it is likely the choice of benevolence. And yes, there are some things you definitely don't have control over, heart, hunger thirst ETC.
I suggest looking into books like Brave New World or Walden 2 to get the Idea what I'm talking about. The workers in Brave New World are drugged and influenced, so that they think their menial tasks are awesome and they are content. It's the same as brainwashing but it's not different to an "free will" upbringing.

I wished that we had total free will, the idea is nice that we have total control of our lives.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

No. There is no such thing as free will. Free will would suggest that one is able to do anything without consequences or ramifications. Free will would also suggest that there is no reason for an action. Everything in life is determined, not to be mistaken with pre-determined. This may sound odd but stick with me here, I'm not the best at giving an explanation but hopefully it makes sense...

If you believed in free will you can go up to any random person in the street and stab them. Then you could step away and say, "nope not guilty, it was free will". You would have no reason to stab the man, you just did because you could. Free will suggest you are in control of your actions but you are NOT guided by reasoning and the concept of choice which i will explain shortly.

Blah blah blah blah blah.

What you've said does not jive with what most philosophers would categorize as 'free will'.

free will
 
?noun
1. free and independent choice; voluntary decision: You took on the responsibility of your own free will.
2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces.

In a philosophical sense, free will is just the idea that we are capable of making choices at any given time, not that there is no consequence to those choices. In fact, your example of stabbing a person then claiming innocence because "It's free will" is saying "I'm not responsible", when the exact opposite is the case when most of us talk about free will. Free will means you are able to see a situation, analyze the possible choices based on the consequences, and then carry out one of the possible actions/reactions. IT DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE A RANDOM IDIOT. If you punched me, and then said, "Nope not guilty. Free will" I'd kick you so hard your testicles would permanently take up residence with your kidneys. You'd be guilty of hitting me and would have received the consequences.