Free will vs determinism

Free will or determinism ? What are you ?

  • I believe in free will

    Votes: 14 77.8%
  • I'm determinist

    Votes: 4 22.2%

  • Total voters
    18

Axcess

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What about internal agencies like intuition, automated reactive thinking, desire, hatred, conscience. This will heavily influence your choice and give you the feeling you have made a free choice

Yes. This internal agencies are more arguments against free will idea.

We don't choose our friends??
Ok you could say that in conventional terms we choose our friends . I realize the weakness of this example but it was too late to me to fix that in my original post. I'm disappointed with the response of this thread by free will believers . They vote for it in the poll but not a single of them defend their point of view with good arguments . Atleast the members that believe in combination of both ( that is called compatibilism ) give valid arguments .
 
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I suppose it depends how you define it...umm, we all have restrictions imposed on us by society, I guess...and also pre-conceived ideas about things. But I think it's possible to make an informed choice about a lot of things.

(I actually thought you meant free will v fate initially. Oops. :s)
 

Calboner

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I do not see how anyone can coherently maintain determinism. In making a choice, you necessarily think of the possibilities that lie before you as genuine possibilities. Determinism holds that there is only one possible course of action before you, namely whichever course you end up taking. Thus one cannot be a determinist within one's acts of choosing.

The same goes for offering choices to other people, or treating them as if they have choice in what they do. You cannot do that and be a determinist at the same time.

What is more, this applies not just to choices in outward action, but even to acts of thinking. If I am trying to figure something out, say trying to answer a question, I must, in doing so, consider the possibilities before me as genuine possibilities, which again contradicts determinism. So the person who professes himself a determinist is contradicting himself every time he or she makes that profession.

You would have to exist outside the world, like God, in order to profess determinism (and it would be determinism not about yourself, but only about those who exist in the world) without contradicting yourself.
Not determinism.

See Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
Quite right. The theoretical opposite to determinism is indeterminism, which is completely compatible with the non-existence of free will.
 

NewAgeMan

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my kind of thread. what is freedom? what does it mean to be real? what is a "will"? what enables me to impose my will on something? what happens to my will when someone else is imposing on it?

to me free will is God's will. it can only be God's will because God is infinite. freedom has no boundaries, and we are finite beings. we can have visions of freedom. we can just barely taste it. I kind of equate that with trying to visualize infinity.
 

Astrate

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I do not see how anyone can coherently maintain determinism. In making a choice, you necessarily think of the possibilities that lie before you as genuine possibilities. Determinism holds that there is only one possible course of action before you, namely whichever course you end up taking.
That leaves a large space between free will and determinism, namely the likelyhood of choosing each of the freely available possibilities, which can be very different for each.

Say you are trying to decide whether to walk out without paying, no-one seems to be watching at the time, you can choose. You immediately draw on a large number of mental faculties without realising: you've got a concept of what you are doing and relate it to customary action; you draw on experience, innate morality, learnt morality, your degree of recklessness and impulsivity -in short, the kind of person you are. This is mostly subconscious, it just gives you a feeling that you shouldn't or that you can.

Yes you can deliberately choose go against your feeling about it, but you are more likely to follow you intuition, and that is not free will.

It is astonishing to see how identical twins, separated at birth, make the same life choices, and they have even shared the same upbringing.
 

B_bi_mmf

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I do not see how anyone can coherently maintain determinism. In making a choice, you necessarily think of the possibilities that lie before you as genuine possibilities. Determinism holds that there is only one possible course of action before you, namely whichever course you end up taking. Thus one cannot be a determinist within one's acts of choosing.

The same goes for offering choices to other people, or treating them as if they have choice in what they do. You cannot do that and be a determinist at the same time.

What is more, this applies not just to choices in outward action, but even to acts of thinking. If I am trying to figure something out, say trying to answer a question, I must, in doing so, consider the possibilities before me as genuine possibilities, which again contradicts determinism. So the person who professes himself a determinist is contradicting himself every time he or she makes that profession.

You would have to exist outside the world, like God, in order to profess determinism (and it would be determinism not about yourself, but only about those who exist in the world) without contradicting yourself.

Quite right. The theoretical opposite to determinism is indeterminism, which is completely compatible with the non-existence of free will.

I think that your logic is entirely fallacious. The fact that we have mental capacity does not imply that we have free will.

We think about things and follow a course of action, but that does not mean that we choose freely. We are a product of our genes and our experience, and even the degree to which we value thinking through the alternatives carefully also depends on those genes and that experience. The process of determining our course of action definitely does occur in our brains, but that fact does not imply free will. Our actions are determined entirely by prior inputs.

The closest we could come to "free" will would be to base all of our actions on the flip of a coin. But the imposition of randomness would often lead to undesired results, so we tend not to do that.

We learn to seek out alternatives and to evaluate them critically, because such behavior is adaptive. But ultimately, our "choices" could always be predicted on the basis of sufficient knowledge of all the inputs, knowledge that is far too vast to actually acquire.

Thus, I am firmly in the camp of determinism, at least as I define the concept in terms of certainty of prediction.

As I have said above, adhering to determinism does not rule out holding people responsible for their actions, nor ought it diminish our feeling good about behaving in kind ways.

Determinism should not lead to fatalism -- that is, to a believe that our actions will have no effect. Our actions have enormous effects. Those effects are predictable as a consequence of all the inputs. Thinking through the consequences and being empathetic are two very positive types of such inputs.
 
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Calboner

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I think that your logic is entirely fallacious. The fact that we have mental capacity does not imply that we have free will. [Etc.]
You have not understood one single claim that I made, much less the structure of the arguments in which you purport to find fallacies. I nowhere asserted that we have free will. Your would-be counter-arguments are completely irrelevant. Try to understand what I wrote before you attempt to criticize it.
 

Calboner

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Please try to be clearer in expressing your views.
My thesis was that it is impossible coherently to assert determinism. My argument is that to choose, to think, or to treat another human being as capable of choosing or thinking, is incompatible with the acceptance of determinism. Here is my post again, with the statement of the thesis and the intermediate conclusions supporting it in bold type:
I do not see how anyone can coherently maintain determinism. In making a choice, you necessarily think of the possibilities that lie before you as genuine possibilities. Determinism holds that there is only one possible course of action before you, namely whichever course you end up taking. Thus one cannot be a determinist within one's acts of choosing.

The same goes for offering choices to other people, or treating them as if they have choice in what they do. You cannot do that and be a determinist at the same time.

What is more, this applies not just to choices in outward action, but even to acts of thinking. If I am trying to figure something out, say trying to answer a question, I must, in doing so, consider the possibilities before me as genuine possibilities, which again contradicts determinism. So the person who professes himself a determinist is contradicting himself every time he or she makes that profession.

You would have to exist outside the world, like God, in order to profess determinism (and it would be determinism not about yourself, but only about those who exist in the world) without contradicting yourself.
 
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Calboner

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I'll give you an analogy. Suppose that someone arrives at the conclusion that the cognitive powers of human beings are so defective that we are incapable of apprehending truth. Such a conclusion does not seem to be, in itself, incoherent. But consider our gloomy speculator making the assertion, "Human beings are incapable of apprehending truth." In making that assertion, he is offering it as truth; but the assertion itself implies that he cannot do what he is purporting to do. Thus the content of his assertion is in contradiction with his act of asserting it. He is trying to assert a view that cannot coherently be asserted (edited to add: by a human being, that is).

This kind of contradiction is called by some a pragmatic contradiction: the contradiction is not in the content of what is asserted, but between that content and the act of asserting it. Note that someone other than a human being -- God, say -- could make the assertion "Human beings are incapable of apprehending truth" without thereby entangling himself (herself, itself) in any contradiction.

I argue that determinism involves a contradiction of this sort. In acting, the agent considers himself capable of choosing between possible actions; in thinking, he considers himself as capable of choosing between possible thoughts. Now you may want to maintain that this is an illusion, and that there is no genuine choice among possible actions or possible thoughts, but merely the succession of one thought or act upon another. The idea in itself seems coherent, but it contradicts the act of affirming it.
 
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B_bi_mmf

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Yes, I would agree that an assertion that the cognitive powers of humans are incapable to apprehending truth represents the type of "pragmatic contradiction" that you describe when a human is making such an assertion.

I disagree with you that asserting determinism constitutes a similar contradiction. There are choices, but those are determined in that they would be entirely predictable based on complete knowledge of the inputs affecting those choices.

I'll give you an analogy. Suppose that someone arrives at the conclusion that the cognitive powers of human beings are so defective that we are incapable of apprehending truth. Such a conclusion does not seem to be, in itself, incoherent. But consider our gloomy speculator making the assertion, "Human beings are incapable of apprehending truth." In making that assertion, he is offering it as truth; but the assertion itself implies that he cannot do what he is purporting to do. Thus the content of his assertion is in contradiction with his act of asserting it. He is trying to assert a view that cannot coherently be asserted.

This kind of contradiction is called by some a pragmatic contradiction: the contradiction is not in the content of what is asserted, but between that content and the act of asserting it. Note that someone other than a human being -- God, say -- could make the assertion "Human beings are incapable of apprehending truth" without thereby entangling himself (herself, itself) in any contradiction.

I argue that determinism involves a contradiction of this sort. In acting, the agent considers himself capable of choosing between possible actions; in thinking, he considers himself as capable of choosing between possible thoughts. Now you may want to maintain that this is an illusion, and that there is no genuine choice among possible actions or possible thoughts, but merely the succession of one thought or act upon another. The idea in itself seems coherent, but it contradicts the act of affirming it.
 

Calboner

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Yes, I would agree that an assertion that the cognitive powers of humans are incapable to apprehending truth represents the type of "pragmatic contradiction" that you describe when a human is making such an assertion.

I disagree with you that asserting determinism constitutes a similar contradiction. There are choices, but those are determined in that they would be entirely predictable based on complete knowledge of the inputs affecting those choices.
That's the part that I have trouble with. How can it be a genuine choice if the outcome is predetermined? If (to take a simple example) I am considering whether to go out this evening or stay home, I regard both of those possible courses of action as -- well, as possible courses of action. According to determinism, they are nothing of the sort; only one of them is, namely whichever course of action I end up taking. The determinist may agree to call this process "choosing," just as the person who believes that human beings cannot apprehend truth may accept the common practice of describing certain things as "true" or "known"; but the theory that each professes denies this. A so-called "choice" between two or more so-called "possibilities," only one of which is actually a possibility, is not a choice.
 

B_bi_mmf

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It is a choice in that pros and cons are weighed, but, still, the ultimate choice would in fact be predictable if we knew all of the inputs impinging on that decision.

That's the part that I have trouble with. How can it be a genuine choice if the outcome is predetermined? If (to take a simple example) I am considering whether to go out this evening or stay home, I regard both of those possible courses of action as -- well, as possible courses of action. According to determinism, they are nothing of the sort; only one of them is, namely whichever course of action I end up taking. The determinist may agree to call this process "choosing," just as the person who believes that human beings cannot apprehend truth may accept the common practice of describing certain things as "true" or "known"; but the theory that each professes denies this. A so-called "choice" between two or more so-called "possibilities," only one of which is actually a possibility, is not a choice.