free will

[Flutterguy]

Was hoping someone could give me a real example of free will, or point me in the direction of a good study that disagrees with me.

I've come to believe we do not have free will. Genes, surroundings and experience dictate every action we make. This has not made me enjoy life less, I find it liberating.

However I love being surprised and am always looking to improve my rational. I challenge you to disprove me!

 

[Kolby Jack]

I chose to respond to your post. Free will.

Now you can argue that my genetic disposition and brain chemistry merely made me the kind of person who would respond to your post, but the lines between genes and fate and will blur when you examine them too close. Either way, I choose not to worry about it.

 

[Torkuda]

This seems odd then. What is the point of anyone trying to prove anything to you then? I don't mean that in a mean way, but after all, if you cannot choose whether to believe them or not, if you only do what certain factors obligate you to do, what's the point in any debate or logical discussion? I suppose you could say it's find that one argument that is the holy grail of arguments and forces people to believe you, but that's not how this would work if you're right is it? Most of the factors convincing you to go along with me or not would be completely out of my control and probably even yours. In fact to be honest any sense of control itself would be an illusion.

Truth is I've always been aware of the monster of a debate that surrounds choice vs fate. I've just always seen it as silly to argue that argument itself serves no purpose.

Maybe you're right, and a criminal has no choice in his actions... and? Are we to legalize his actions then? Of course not. So... what? So even if choice does not exist, and we can prove it does not, we're still going to find ourselves obligated to behave as though it does. Seriously, who here wants to live in a country where they decide to try to stop outlawing bad behavior, and just condition citizens to behave as they should? There's a pleasant thought. Government run psychological conditioning. Unlikely I admit, but what else can we do if it turns out choice isn't real and we are, in essence, arresting innocent people?

Course that isn't your real question. Is there empirical evidence that choice, superseding the influences of the physical world, exists? Well to be honest, that seems a dishonest question. After all, if the choice occurs absent of physical influences, how can you use physical influences to prove it's existence? Aren't you looking for physical evidence of something happening without a physical cause? Isn't that kind of silly sounding?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

So lets say that you're right and genes, experience, and surroundings completely dictate every action a person makes.

In theory that would mean that since a parent has the same genes as their child, and shares their child's surroundings, and knows all of their child's experiences up to a certain age (lets say it's a stay at home parent with a single child, and the child doesn't go to school yet), then that parent should be able to predict that child's behavior with 100% accuracy.

Talk to any parent in the world and they will all tell you that children are unpredictable as hell.

Bam, free will.

 

[Queen Michael]

Free will is supposed to not be predetermined by the law of cause and effect, but not random either. Thing is, those are really the only two options, so this "free will" thing doesn't seem that likely.

 

[Directionless]

All of that heavily influences the decisions we make, but you can certainly make other choices. It's just uncomfortable, so we avoid it. That doesn't mean that we are 100% pre-programmed and cannot under any circumstances perform that action.

Certain drugs often rid us of our inhibitions and usual thought processes. Completely out of character actions can result from this. Is this another pre-programmed set of events that are solely determined by our genetics and surroundings?

 

[oreso]

Certainly, the environment and our genetics completely determines our choices. The randomness that gets thrown in is just randomness; there's nothing 'free' about randomness.

But that's fine: "you" are still making those decisions. Any decision that has been caused by your personality has been caused by you. It was a free decision.

(The fact that your personality was caused by some other factors is interesting, but doesn't actually change this fact).

 

[Realitycrash]

Was hoping someone could give me a real example of free will, or point me in the direction of a good study that disagrees with me.

I've come to believe we do not have free will. Genes, surroundings and experience dictate every action we make. This has not made me enjoy life less, I find it liberating.

However I love being surprised and am always looking to improve my rational. I challenge you to disprove me!

You can't be disproved, and you can't be proven right, since 'Free Will can't be 'proved' with our traditional ways of Empiric Proof, just as the same God.

 

[JoJo]

So lets say that you're right and genes, experience, and surroundings completely dictate every action a person makes.

In theory that would mean that since a parent has the same genes as their child, and shares their child's surroundings, and knows all of their child's experiences up to a certain age (lets say it's a stay at home parent with a single child, and the child doesn't go to school yet), then that parent should be able to predict that child's behavior with 100% accuracy.

Talk to any parent in the world and they will all tell you that children are unpredictable as hell.

Bam, free will.

Your example doesn't really make sense, for a start a single parent only shares 50% of their genes with their offspring, nor do they know how those the expression of those genes is going to be affected by the child's environment, even if they spent all their time with their child. Which itself seems unlikely, have they never left their child with the other parent, or a relative, or babysitter? I've never heard of a parent that clingy.

 

[HardkorSB]

In theory that would mean that since a parent has the same genes as their child

Similar? Yes. The same? No.

and knows all of their child's experiences up to a certain age (lets say it's a stay at home parent with a single child, and the child doesn't go to school yet)

The parent may see the child most of the time (definitely not 100% of the time, that would be impossible) but what the child actually experiences is not at all clear, especially since the child can't properly express itself.

then that parent should be able to predict that child's behavior with 100% accuracy.

Technically they could if they would carefully study their child 24/7 but none of them do so that is never the case.

 

[Arakasi]

In theory that would mean that since a parent has the same genes as their child

Similar? Yes. The same? No.

and knows all of their child's experiences up to a certain age (lets say it's a stay at home parent with a single child, and the child doesn't go to school yet)

The parent may see the child most of the time (definitely not 100% of the time, that would be impossible) but what the child actually experiences is not at all clear, especially since the child can't properly express itself.

then that parent should be able to predict that child's behavior with 100% accuracy.

Technically they could if they would carefully study their child 24/7 but none of them do so that is never the case.

I really don't think people understand the sheer amount of processing power it would take to fully understand the complexity of reality, even in as confined an area as one child's brain. The amount of power and sensation is so far beyond a human brain it is staggering, it's even amazingly far beyond the comprehension of our most powerful machines.

 

[HardkorSB]

I really don't think people understand the sheer amount of processing power it would take to fully understand the complexity of reality, even in as confined an area as one child's brain. The amount of power and sensation is so far beyond a human brain it is staggering, it's even amazingly far beyond the comprehension of our most powerful machines.

I honestly don't think people can fully understand why they are who they are and do what they do (too many things happening in one's life, what seems insignificant consciously can be very important subconsciously, not to mention all the stuff going on on a cellular level etc.), and even those who are capable of doing so can never accurately predict their own thoughts and actions since there are way to many variables.
A machine could potentially do it but again, 24/7 external and internal observation would be required (going as far as reading the person's thoughts which, at least to my knowledge, is impossible at this point).

 

[KOMega]

I'd like to think there is freewill within a set of restrictions. Kind of like how you can be more creative when given a few rules/restrictions.

We have choice, but not completely free unrestricted choice.
Like an extreme example, I cannot fly into space by the power of my will alone.
This is restricted by the very laws of physics. You are not going to move yourself with sparks in your brain. The best you can do is have those sparks communicate with something that can move you.

And then we can go deeper into more specific restrictions, like environment, society, upbringing.

Within these rule sets however is some leeway room, and while not huge, I think that is freewill.

Even if people are completely controlled by these set rules, when they are all brought together, they are all different from person to person. If we all follow a set of rules but they are all different from everyone else's, what is the difference from freewill?

 

[GundamSentinel]

I don't think there's free will either, I'm a determinist. Predicting what a person would do given all previous conditions are known is not practically possible, thankfully, but theoretically I personally think it's all there.

In the same way, you can't practically separate a single drop of water from a the sea again after it has fallen in, but the particle's state and movement still contain the information to do so.

But then again, deteminism hardly matters. As neuroscientist Sam Harris wrote: "This discloses the real mystery of free will: if our experience is compatible with its utter absence, how can we say that we see any evidence for it in the first place?"

Seeing that, things don't have to be predictable for free will not to exist as we are not in control of what causes it.

 

[PromethianSpark]

This seems odd then. What is the point of anyone trying to prove anything to you then? I don't mean that in a mean way, but after all, if you cannot choose whether to believe them or not, if you only do what certain factors obligate you to do, what's the point in any debate or logical discussion? I suppose you could say it's find that one argument that is the holy grail of arguments and forces people to believe you, but that's not how this would work if you're right is it? Most of the factors convincing you to go along with me or not would be completely out of my control and probably even yours. In fact to be honest any sense of control itself would be an illusion.

Hate to tell you that you choose a pretty bad example to argue over, because mounting evidence is making it increasingly clear that we do not in fact choose to believe anything. One might say that our beliefs choose us, and it is also established psychologically, as many wise people already knew, that debates/arguments are rarely about truth seeking. Lastly, on a philosophical point, if someone should convince you of something that makes you change your mind, doesn't this speak to the arguments efficacy of persuasion, rather than a choice made by the listener? We can easily imagine a chain of cause and effect, from argument, to believe, by way of brain function and other things.

To the OP, I commend you for your believe, and more importantly, for embracing it without feeling cynical in anyway (which is what so many people think the idea would do to them). I have been a strong determinist for most of my life and am naturally taken by its arguments. It is important to note though, that no matter how convincing, these arguments can never really disprove free will, just make it unlikely, or to make it recede like a 'god of the gaps' thing. That being said, proponents of free will can do little more than offer up blind faith, disguised in terrible examples or flawed arguments, or to point to the gaps in arguments of determinism much like the way christians point to the gaps in science's model of the world.

 

[Korenith]

So lets say that you're right and genes, experience, and surroundings completely dictate every action a person makes.

In theory that would mean that since a parent has the same genes as their child, and shares their child's surroundings, and knows all of their child's experiences up to a certain age (lets say it's a stay at home parent with a single child, and the child doesn't go to school yet), then that parent should be able to predict that child's behavior with 100% accuracy.

Talk to any parent in the world and they will all tell you that children are unpredictable as hell.

Bam, free will.

Doesn't that assume a) the intelligence of the parent and their ability to empathise b) that they understand not only their entire genetics but also that of their partners so they could interpret every possible combination of said two genetic components c) the parent's understanding of a child's mind in development. And that's just the few things I can come up with off the top of my head. Unless you know EVERYTHING nothing is 100% predictable but just because we are incapable of said prediction it doesn't prove free will.

 

[Flatfrog]

This seems odd then. What is the point of anyone trying to prove anything to you then? I don't mean that in a mean way, but after all, if you cannot choose whether to believe them or not, if you only do what certain factors obligate you to do, what's the point in any debate or logical discussion?

Well, here's an analogy. When tossing a coin, whether it lands heads or tails is entirely the function of the laws of physics. But that doesn't mean we can predict it in advance, because we don't know what the initial parameters will be.

In the same way, my opinion on something may be entirely determined by the firing of my neurons, my past history, my genetics and a myriad other factors, but that doesn't mean you can't affect it.

What Daniel Dennett calls the 'kind of free will worth wanting' is not to do with whether something is determined but whether it is 'inevitable' - whether it could have been otherwise if circumstances changed slightly. And that's perfectly consistent with the laws of physics. So I don't see any conflict between the idea that I have choice and the idea that this is entirely the result of physical processes.

 

[PromethianSpark]

I don't think there's free will either, I'm a determinist. Predicting what a person would do given all previous conditions are known is not practically possible, thankfully, but theoretically I personally think it's all there.

I really like this explanation of determinism. As I often had to explain to my university peers, I do not believe that human beings can ever predict the course of personal and social life (as its complexity is beyond us), but it is however doable theoretically, so for example in the 'mind of god'. By that, I mean a super intelligence that far out strips anything that is probably possible in the universe.

 

[zxvcasdfqwerzxcv]

I don't believe we have free will. However I believe that determining our behaviour is far too complex to be ever calculated (I mean we would have to examine trillions of parameters at a quantum level); therefore it appears, on a macro level, that we have free will.