3mo ago

About Will

Maybe this has come up before, but I still wanted to ask. Lately, I’ve been a bit confused about whether we really have free will or not. I’m not religious and I don’t really believe in metaphysics. I’d probably call myself agnostic. I’ve just been questioning life more than I used to, and this thought keeps popping into my head.

Do we actually have free will? Like, can we really choose things the way religious texts say we can? What made me think about this is how predictable the micro world seems to be—but when you go deeper into the quantum level, things get really chaotic and complex.

On top of that, as people, we’re constantly shaped by what we go through, and it feels like our reactions and choices get more limited over time.

What do you think about all this?

38 comments

There's a lot of schools of thought on this.
One to consider is that every time we make a decision, the universe basically does an instant mitosis. You find yourself in one of them. This would be a sort of non determinism, and if this school of thought intrigues you, that's a good keyword. This is the Many Worlds interpretation.
Conversely, there's the Block Time model, which kind of asserts through relativistic fuckery that all time exists. There is no now (only a relative now), and yeah, you have no free will whatsoever.
I tend to favor a blend of Block Time and non deterministic ideas. I think we have free will that operates on a sort of plane of possible actions which limits our will, and that we (consciousness) are just a really, really, really small facet of some larger dimension that is being crushed through a higher dimensional black hole, and some really hard-for-us-to-wrap-our-heads-around shit is getting full-on Allegory of the Cave'd into what we experience as consciousness.
So I think we're sort of conscious, I think we're sort of having free will, but I think we operate within confines that we can't see which limits our free will. We're kind of just along for the ride.
- I think we have free will that operates on a sort of plane of possible actions which limits our will [...]
  Kant argues for something similar when he says that as humans, we are citizens of two worlds: the sensible world of phenomena in which we are bound by the laws of nature as well as the intelligible world of noumena, which is subject to reason and, by extension, freedom of will.
  I think it's important to remember that Kant doesn't see free will in the same way for example St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas define it — they believe free will to be the capability of arbitrary choice ('liberum arbitrium') — but as the product of rational thought. Freedom (autonomy), in the Kantian sense, is being able to make the reasonable, responsible choice.
  Edit: Paraphrased and translated from Kaufmann, Arthur. Rechtsphilosophie. C.H. Beck. Munich: 1997. Pp.240-1 (German philosophy of law textbook)
- Wow, you've given me a lot of research topics. I can't say that I am as well versed in the culture of philosophy as you are, so I will research the topics you mentioned one by one and get back to you.

There are a few possibilities for how the universe ultimately functions:
Determinism - under determinism, every event is the direct-and-only-possible outcome of the causes that preceded it. Everything that is or occurs is ultimately due to the unfolding conditions initially set by the big bang. What set those conditions though?
Stochasticism - everything is, at root, random. If QM effects don't directly impact the macro world (is an electrons "choice" of up or down spin a butterfly's wings upon the larger system it entangles into?), then at the very least the initial conditions of the Big Bang were randomly set.
Super-determinism - not only is everything deterministic, but so are seemingly stochastic processes. Maybe there are infinite universes with every possible starting condition? Maybe every quantum event splits the multiverse onto various paths were each possible outcome is taken? (This is basically what I believe.)
Will - there exists an object which can "choose" things without any calculation process. It simply "decides" something, but this isn't a random process. It will usually choose the same outcome giving the same coniditons, but not always so it isn't a purely deterministic object either. We have to treat this like an Oracle, that is mathematically, it's a thing that spits out answers but has no internal process we can understand. This object could be God (divine will) or something inside some or all acting beings in the universe (free will).
This problem with Will is that it's undefinable. Look at the axioms most mathematicians use: ZFC, the (Z)ermello-(F)ranco axioms plus (C)hoice. We can do math with or without Choice, both make sense, but we can't prove that you need it or not. And the axiom of choice is purist expression of Free Will that I know of: either you are allowed to have some undefined means of selecting one item from (possibly infinite) sets, or you must have a definite (calculable) means of choosing. Free will, or determinism? Even math can't decide!
- We can do math with or without Choice
  Five Stages of Accepting Constructive Mathematics - Andrej Bauer very good talk on that topic

I've never really understood any argument for free will, because I've never really understood exactly what they mean by 'free will'. Take me through it, exactly what does it mean if you 'make a choice'?
- As free will, we can handle any choice you make. At least that's what I mean. Everything you choose in life, whether you brush your teeth this morning, whether you drink tea or coffee. More broadly, your ideologies, your reactions in life, whether you choose to be a "bad person" as a result of bad experiences. The holy books say we can choose these things. That we can determine our destiny by these decisions and that it is up to us to choose between heaven or hell. I think this is wrong and I wanted to ask you all my opinion. There will always be certain criteria and certain limits when we make choices. But what I am curious about is the predictability of our choices.
  
  Ok, let's take one example. You said you can choose whether you brush your teeth this morning or not.
  If you do choose to brush your teeth, what caused you to do so?
  
  All those things are cultural. Humans are social creatures that mimic other humans to form a kinship. Whether you drink tea because that is what British people do, that is cultural. You put a human baby with a chimpanzee, they will mimic the chimpanzee. Feral children raised by dogs mimic the dogs they grew up with. Christianity does not indefinitely say we have free will. It is a debate, not a consensus. Calvinism sides with predestination as an example. The Qur'an is very heavy on predestination - a holy book to Muslims which is steeped in Judeo-Christian tradition.
  Good and evil, or good versus evil is dualism that Judeo-Christian tradition inherited from the Persians when Jews were ruled by the Persians. Again, it is a cultural concept that is not universal, but contingent on what is taught generationally, and taken for granted as being a truth. The fact you take dualism seriously, shows that you are influenced by cultural assumptions made up, and passed up to the present day by distinct cultures. In reality, there is no good versus evil, or good or evil in a universal, absolute sense.
- I suspect we don't know enough about the mechanics of consciousness yet to determine what free will really means. We certainly know enough about psychology to understand predispositions to make certain choices and humans as a group are fairly predictable.
  
  If you can't define the thing you're arguing for, then I don't think you can really reasonably claim that it exists.

I tend towards Daniel Dennett's views on this. The universe is fundamentally deterministic, but we can act as though we have free will.
Because whether that will is possible or not kinda doesn't matter. Did you make any choices today? Yes, of course you did. But who are you? You're a product of the universe, a complex system of neurons and physics that generate a consciousness that we don't really understand.

I think every system is deterministic as much as it can be defined and reasoned. Macro world is working with deterministic principles in my opinion. A robber steals something due to maybe greediness or starvation etc. reason and they're being judged with reason to protect the safety of people and order.
But I cannot say the same thing about the micro world. Because even science can't reason and explain it too much when things goes quantum mechanics. We just make it "serving" for our goals. Like using a useful stuff which we don't even know how it works.

I don't think that being predictable means a lack of free will. The only time something would be truly non-predictable would be when it was entirely random, acting against itself and with no regard to stimuli or other factors. Not even all but the maddest of humans, and even then not always, are even close to that. Therefore humans will always be predictable to some extent. That says nothing about free will or the non-existence of it.
Recognise the absurd nature of life in general, and your life in particular, and that you could choose to leave it at any moment and run away to be an intinerant ant herder if you truly wanted to. The structures of socoety around us, and ties and connections we build limit our ability to want to drop everything and be free. But humanity is a balancing act, without connections and actualisation in the perceptions of others we're no different from a tree.
I also think that we're a long way from definitive answers on this since we have little to no idea about consciousness, and free will naturally seems a facet of that.

Look at the works of B. F. Skinner
Free will is an illusion, but it doesn't need to invoke a deterministic universe or anything so esoteric
The reality is that we're born into societies that shape us. We can do great things with the personal agency that we have, but we will always be constrained by the things we're taught, the things we're not taught, and the world around us
It's neither good nor bad, it's just a part of life. It's all about what we choose to do that matters
All we can do is our best
- Thanks for you fast comment. I'll look at B.F. Skinner.
  
  You're welcome
  There are many others with good ideas about free will, but the reality is that it doesn't matter in the slightest. If we do have it, then we will act as we choose, if we don't, then what we think we think we're acting from choice
  The outcome is absolutely the same, it's just whether or not we're prepared to take responsibility for our choices
  It's all unfalsafiable, so it's in the realm of philosophy. There's no evidence either way, so we may as well just be true to ourselves and enjoy the ride

Wow this is such a big topic, every time I come to explain my reasoning....I give up, there is just too much to cover.
My opinion: Short answer is yes we have free will!
Very compressed longer answer:
I have read a lot from various points of view; and very broadly, the "no free will" camp has a lot of post-hoc rationalization to explain away why things happen.
For a while, I was leaning to the "no free will" camp, but so many arguments end unsatisfactorily.
So to boil it down to the most basic reason why I think we have free will. We feel like we do, and there is no compelling evidence to show that we don't. There is currently no predictive power to say what anyone will do given any situation; at best we can give a probabilistic group of possible decisions, but this is not predictive this is just a chaotic model that we know the constraints of.
I really could go into more detail....

Free will does not exist in a biological sense. If you get hit in the head in a car accident, and you get brain damage, you can be a changed person. That is not free will. Sexual activity is an example of the lack of free will. That is why we have teen pregnancies when such pregnancies, according to a certain consensus, doom the people who are pregnant. That is why we have abortion.
Christian theologians for centuries debated whether we have free will, or predestination. They asked profound questions which are answered by science. Asceticism or discipline helps us try to deviate from our animalistic tendencies, but, so far, death is the ultimate predestination.
- Free will does not exist in a biological sense.
  True but...
  If you get hit in the head in a car accident, and you get brain damage, you can be a changed person. That is not free will.
  That's not a rebuttal to free will. It does indicate that our mind generates our person. But just because your choices can be influenced doesn't mean you don't make choices. The question is whether you could choose otherwise.
- I may not fully understand what you are saying, but what I am focusing on is whether we are free in the choice we make when we do something. Whether we have a choice in what we do or who we are, rather than what happens to us. If we don't give a right to free will, wouldn't the evils that we as humans condemn cease to be evils? When I describe the evils that are done, I'm not talking about categorizing them as bad or good, I'm talking about the people who do them choosing whether or not to do them. For example, murder, rape, jealousy. Do we kill someone or is it a reflection of what we have been exposed to throughout our lives?

Oh, and ignore all religious ideas about free will
You're not going to get anywhere listening to fairytales
- Even though I have no religion, I cannot ignore them, even if they are religious thoughts. I understand your point, but my real fear is that I cannot see what they see. So I give them all at least a chance.
  
  Then you're wasting your time, and ours
- Trust nothing an enthusiast has to say about ANYTHING
  
  You can trust me about booze, and fisting
  I know a lot about booze, and fisting
  A couple of other things too, but those two are where I really shine
- I'd hope that people posting about philosophy are at least aware enough and able to think about a range of ideas to see that Positivism is but one idea and not an entirely uncontraversial one.
  Transcindentalism is important to human existence and experience, be it organised religion or not.
  On topic: things being able to be worked out or predicted don't necessarily indicate a lack of free will.
  But a more important question is is the reality of free will more important than the image-idea of it? We can only live our lives as we can, with the knowledge we have while doing so.
  
  But a more important question is is the reality of free will more important than the image-idea of it? We can only live our lives as we can, with the knowledge we have while doing so.
  Exactly
  It's a pretty pointless question, because the outcome is the same regardless

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