Poll: Do you believe in free will?
- Thread starter Golden Gryphon
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I wanted a fifth option "I choose not to decide, but recognize that I still have made a choice."
I think we do have free will. That our lives may seem to be firmly upon rails does not matter. What matters is how we agonize over it and wonder if we are truly free. Only truly free creatures have the luxury to be so miserable and question their own freedom.
[grins] I don't think any rational and significantly educated person could ever believe in free will, the universe doesn't and cannot work that way. That would suggest that the widespread illusion of free will is unavoidable and perhaps necessary to stop apathy in those who don't realise that a lack of free will doesn't preclude consequences and the ability to experience choices, even if the result is fixed.
Non-determinism in no way directly implies the concept of free will, it merely allows for the future to be variable, despite a total knowledge of things as they are now (partly because it's impossible to have total knowledge because of uncertainty, partly due to probabilistic, rather than determantistic, events). Free will would still have to exist as some kind of force than can influence probability that originates from, for lack of a better concept, the soul. However, Physicists would then argue that maybe there should be a 'soul' particle...
Non-determinism in no way directly implies the concept of free will, it merely allows for the future to be variable, despite a total knowledge of things as they are now (partly because it's impossible to have total knowledge because of uncertainty, partly due to probabilistic, rather than determantistic, events). Free will would still have to exist as some kind of force than can influence probability that originates from, for lack of a better concept, the soul. However, Physicists would then argue that maybe there should be a 'soul' particle...