Thread: Free will is a stupid thing.

I understand what you're saying, but I do agree that there's more to it than that.

Without having free will the whole concept of 'possible experience,' whether good or bad, is deminished exponentially. If consciousness was only "designed" to follow the path of least resistance, without question, (i.e. what you've done and known to work, no matter how often you try) imagine the explorative (perhaps evolutionary) experiences you are shutting out of the equation, just for the security of knowing what you're doing to do is 'going to go smoothly.'
You take the risk of getting yourself, (or human kind, for that matter) stuck in a rut. Experience, sooner or later, is going to be more bound to just revolve. Everything goes according to plan, and as a consequence, nothing ascends.
It is a price we must pay, that we stand the chance of things growing exponentially worse, but at least you are a Part of something, with the ability to make your part significant. At least Your decisions have the power to effect Your experience (and the experience of others, more often than not.)
Sure, you could not have been created (or whatever term you wanna use) with the ability to take advantage of your free will, rendering it null, anyway, but in doing so, I think it would mean nullifying the whole concept of being alive, and any more unique than the person right next to you.
Living what you can honestly summarize as a 'satisfactory life,' by the time your life is over, after knowing that You worked for it, you beat the odds, applied your judgements, beliefs, perseverance (sp) and ascended (or sunk) to whatever level You choose to, I think, is a lot better than your creator saying:

"Hey...you....Get your ass back in line with the rest of the cogs." and having no choice but to listen.

But of course, if we had No free will, by definition, we wouldn't notice, so you could be right, and it may not matter at all. Depends on how you look at it.

Free will is the existance of our own decision making process. It is our experience in life and motives that are all analyzed by our brain to make a decision when we need it to choose between certain things. At least this is what i've decided on thinking it is. I believe free will is the ability to decide without any outside intimidation.

What if you have more than one option though? That is where free will comes in. What if one option is clearly easier while the other provides better results? Do you take the easier one or the one with better results? Maybe you decide you don't want to do either.

Maybe you know your wrong and doing what you think is best is a bad idea. Maybe none of that matters though. I think the process of thinking about your options is free will in itself. Your not doing the first thing you think of, your thinking about it. Which means your in control.

The English philosopher Tomas Gobbs came up with his theory about the forming of a state with governmental control based much on the concept of free will. As he put it all people have equal rights and free will but if they were to realize (make into reality, not "realize" in the meaning of understanding) all their rights and if their free will was never limited then existence would be utter chaos and as a result people would never be able to realize most of their rights and abilities. Thus, the forming of a state and government with certain rules and laws is necessary because then even though the people give up some of their rights, they gain the possibility to realize most of them.

Free will in society isn't exactly the ultimate concept of free will simply because of the barriers set to one's life in relation to different actions.
There are always limitations at which logical reasoning stops free will but as pointed out above if these limitations didn't exist then existence as a whole would be chaotic.

What I don't like about Free Will is that from either a theological or scientific standpoint, it is not possible. The bible says that God gifted humans free will, but quite frankly that's just f***ing ass crap, because an omnipotent God knows everything you will ever do and therefore your life is predestined.

Logically, free will is invalid because of the argument that once you have made a decision, there is no conceivable way that you would have ever made a different choice (due to the fact that all your experiences up until that point will have been exactly the same).

Scientifically, we are all just complex arrangments of atoms, which react according to fundamental physical laws of the universe. Chemical, electrical, kinetic reactions all control what we do with the atoms that are our body and mind. It is not so hard to believe that we are not so special in this universe, as all matter is just the assortment of protons, neutrons, electrons and all those other little bastard particles.

There are arguments to these I'm sure, but what is comes down to in the end is, IMO, that we DO have Free CHOICE but that doesn't mean we have free will. And the aspect of free choices may even be an illusiory one.

Ah well, free will I think is a question with no answer. Not for us mere mortals anyway.
Who cares anyway, it's not gonna change a damn thing. Depressing to think about too. Just give reality a good hard kick in the face every once in a while, show 'em who's boss.

Originally posted by Alric+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric)</div>

What if you have more than one option though? That is where free will comes in. What if one option is clearly easier while the other provides better results? Do you take the easier one or the one with better results? Maybe you decide you don't want to do either.[/b]

All this does not require free will. Your brain automatically does what it thinks best, for example, if you are tired, you might choose the easier option, and if you are bursting with energy, you may choose the one with better results. No free will needed here.

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You take the risk of getting yourself, (or human kind, for that matter) stuck in a rut. Experience, sooner or later, is going to be more bound to just revolve. Everything goes according to plan, and as a consequence, nothing ascends.

I'm not saying our brains always take the path of least resistance. I'm saying they weigh various impulses against eachother, then decide, without a dark factor such as free will. Jumping from the top of a building onto a matress is taking a rather large risk. Yet your brain may decide the adrenaline rush and your increase in social standing might be worth it.

My problem with free will is:
a) I've yet to see evidence it is needed to explain how we make decisions.
B) Everybody seems to think having free will is somehow better, I've also got no clue where that notion came from.
c) People seem to think the alternative is becoming a mindless robot. I say the alternative is you make the right decisions, without some random factor interfering just because it can.

Free will... I don't think there is really such a thing. Not the exact thing. I mean we do have imput in ever action we do. Our concious is like the 'free will'-part, but the subconcious is the 'not-so-free-will-part'.

However, becouse councious and subconcious are one, is not what your subconcious wants for you what you want? Becouse you are your subconcious.

So really we do all have free will in the maxium way we could have it, if we wouldn't get contantly raped by society that takes it away... sort of.

Allso, free will is desirable. I don't know or that is evolutionary set into our minds or that society put it in our head that free will is better then 'not-so-free-will'. However one thing is sure, free will be nice to have, regardless or it really is a free will: aslong as Think you have the maxium amount of free will, you can't really complain.

So basically, free-will-debate is kind of silly in my eyes, becouse besided like corrupt governments and society oppressing our free will, in our own minds we have (the illusion of) maximum free will.

Originally posted by Jalexxi
So, this is about free will. I may have completely misunderstood the concept of true free will, but for now I'm just going to argument that I think it's stupid to either think that we have it, and thinking that free will is desirable. Let's analyze the decision-making process without free will first:

A situation arises in which a decision has been made. Our brain weighs various different impulses, and extracts from our experience what previously led to good things, and what led to bad things. Out of that follows a nessecary conclusion, namely that our brain decides to do the thing it thinks of as best.

Now, let's add in free will. What happens? Well, exactly the same, but now there some random factor involved somewhere. Let's say after our brain has contemplated what is good or bad, free will kicks in. What happens? I don't know. We can only assume that the addition of free will somehow changes the outcome of the decision. If it did not, it would be a non-factor and we would not need it at all. So, free will spins the decision in a random direction. But our brain has analyzed and come to, within the confines of the information available to it, best conclusion. So free will can only make the decision worse.

I want to open up the debate on this, I think better in dialogue. If you disagree, I'd like to hear it, I get the feeling I'm missing something somewhere.

Okay, now lets put your explanation into concrete terms -- a great Luxury Ship is sinking. The first impulse of the Brain would scream for personal survival, and would impulse toward rushing the lifeboats. That is what you would suppose the "best conclusion". But Free Will enters in, and those of noble and moral bearing choose instead to stand aside for the benefit of the Women and the Children.

You see, Free Will is not stupid. In elaborating above mere survival and gratification impulses, it has become something Higher and Better.

With your 'best conclusions' you would reduce Man to being a very competitive Ape on the World Scene. But Civilization would be done.

Free Will is the first step toward civilization and Spirituality.

Your assuming that your brain is not part of you, which is silly. You basicly said you dont have free will because your brain decided what it thought was best. When your brain decided that, its the same as you. Its impossible for you to do something without your brain.

If your defining free will as freedom from your brain, then there really is no arguement here. As far as I know you can't think without using your brain. So by your definition you are absolutely right.

I do not define free will in that way however. Free will is the ability to do what you want. Your brain takes into account all your past experience, all your memories, everything you need or want, what you believe in, the way you feel you should act and basicly everything else that makes you, you and decides on what to do. The fact of the matter is that you(your brain) decides what you will do, not anyone else.

Originally posted by Leo Volont
Okay, now lets put your explanation into concrete terms -- a great Luxury Ship is sinking. The first impulse of the Brain would scream for personal survival, and would impulse toward rushing the lifeboats. That is what you would suppose the "best conclusion". But Free Will enters in, and those of noble and moral bearing choose instead to stand aside for the benefit of the Women and the Children..

This still does not require free will. You assume the best conclusion of your brain is trying to survive. I don't believe that is so. We are bombarded from a very young age with the idea that self-sacrifice is good, by society and religion. So, our brains may add in that factor, and decide (perhaps misguidedly) the better thing to do is to sacrifice yourself.

Originally posted by Alric
Your assuming that your brain is not part of you, which is silly. You basicly said you dont have free will because your brain decided what it thought was best. When your brain decided that, its the same as you. Its impossible for you to do something without your brain.

Fair point, maybe I should clarify myself a bit.
I've seen a lot of people who have problems with materialistic or spiritual determinism, because it denies free will. I don't get that. To me, determinism is very logical. We always try to do the best thing based on the information given to us. That seems pretty obvious, but I take it one step further and say we are UNABLE to do anything but what seems best to us. Hence, determinism. I've been using the term brain because I thought if I said mind, or seperated mind from free will, a lot of people would get confused. I tried to approach this from the materialistic determinism point of view, as it is the most widespread and easiest to understand.
I'm against free will because it is something inherently unexplainable and unnessecary. Sometimes it even directly contradicts our experience (If a certain action did not occur to you at a certain point in time, were you free to do that action?).

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

where's bradybaker? This is like, his favorite topic.

I don't see why it matters. They can both exist. Everything you do may be based on something before it, but you are still free to do whatever you want. The fact that the thing you want is based on who you are, an who you are is based on what created you, which was made because something else happened, which happened because something else happened at the beginning of time, really doesn't matter.

What your really saying is all actions are based on past actions, but that doesn't mean the future is predetermined, only that it is based on the present.

I think that my point is on the level that we are all aware of, we have free will to do what we want, when we want to. But at the same time on a level where god(if you believe in one) can not even understand, everything might be based on something else.

In other words, you roll a die and the number that comes up is random. Everyone agrees the number is random but deep down something caused the number to come up. Now was it really random? Yes it was because if you did it again, you wouldn't get the same result. So both can exist, the number being random, and the results being based on other factors we can't even see.

The same goes for free will.

Originally posted by Jalexxi

Fair point, maybe I should clarify myself a bit.
I've seen a lot of people who have problems with materialistic or spiritual determinism, because it denies free will. I don't get that. To me, determinism is very logical. We always try to do the best thing based on the information given to us. That seems pretty obvious, but I take it one step further and say we are UNABLE to do anything but what seems best to us. Hence, determinism. I've been using the term brain because I thought if I said mind, or seperated mind from free will, a lot of people would get confused. I tried to approach this from the materialistic determinism point of view, as it is the most widespread and easiest to understand.
I'm against free will because it is something inherently unexplainable and unnessecary. Sometimes it even directly contradicts our experience (If a certain action did not occur to you at a certain point in time, were you free to do that action?).

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

You don't like Determinism, but your rejection of Free Will gives you no choice.

You must be very young. You must never have had to make a Choice in your life. These Choices that adults make are very far from coming automatically. yes, I understand how Existential Philosophy has plagued the European Intelligencia and still somewhat poisons some circles in America. They can't intellectually get around the idea that choices are not all determined somehow. Their materialism runs so deep that they have lost the sense that the Human Will does not have any inherent inertia... the human will is not necessarily carried along in a straight line.

Be careful with your denial of Will. It largely propelled an entire generation of European Existentialists into committing Suicide -- they felt that Suicide was the only possible expression of Free Will.

Anyway, why would you wish to indulge your sense of inquiry into this dark and morbid Existentialism. Besides being personally dangerous (the suicide rates really do factor a 100 to 1 over the general population) it is gloomy and pessimistic. One morally sleepwalks through life because one has convinced one's self that one has no Choice. We have Existentialists committing incest, and doing the worst drugs, all because their determinism has put them into a momentum driven straight line -- a straight line down. When one discontinues any active control over one's Life Direction, where is there to go but downhill?

Snap out of it.

If all choses are predetermined then all you have to do is choose is to succeed and you will because you are predetermined to.

Originally posted by Alric
If all choses are predetermined then all you have to do is choose is to succeed and you will because you are predetermined to.

Yeah, if George Bush can be President of the United States, then anything is possible.

Wow, I'm disagreeing with a lot of you, I don't know where to start.

Predetermined "paths of life" means to me that there is a right answer for what we are to do. Maybe it's a decision we made before we forgot. It provides a reason to live.

Take, for example, a career occupation. If someone tells you are going to be a slave, constructing a great wall, a great pyramid, or anything else, that is not free will. Now, other than being a slave, there are many things you could do. You could be a scientist, a nurse, a musician, et cetera.

You can choose do whatever makes you happy, or you could simply do whatever you expect to do. Like when you get out of college, you can get a job doing what you studied, or something completely different.

Deny free will, to me, is saying we have absolutely no control over life. We cannot create anything, we cannot think. We would all be mindless creatures on a conveyor belt being transported through life. Then, everything would be predetermined. What would be the point of "living" life? We could not grow, we could not learn. We could replace ourselves with math equations. We could skip right to the end, since we know how it would end, and avoid the misery. We would have no purpose to live.

The idea that noone has free will , or can make an informed decision based on is quite complicated . I think the key to the argument lies in consciousness . Our subconscious is the part of our brain which controls many of our bodily functions , and also has some play in our actions , but mainly the reactive and instinctive actions . The consciousness is where you might pinpoint where free will exists . If you look at say , a guy who is asked by his wife to choose a colour for their living room , he has no idea which colour to choose because he has no colour sense or taste . And so he pulls a colour from the colour book completely randomly . But what is it that makes him choose that particular colour , he may weigh up several factors , he doesnt like too bright colours as they are distracting , he doesnt like the dark ones as they wouldnt look right either , so he chooses a neutral colour like white or cream colour . He assumes his wife wont mind as its a pleasent colour to have . But these assumptions are all based on a picture he builds of the situation , and he must balance all the factors and decides what is best by trying to get the lest confliction .

Now you can argue that all his decisions are pre programmed from his life experiences , or you can also say he is making an informed decision based on the data he was given . Whether free will is involved is hard to determine , if he was given another chance to do the same thing , but without remembering it , would he do the exact same thing ? Or would he come to a different conclusion based on different factors taken into consideration . If you could do this you could see if free will is there .

Originally posted by DistantClone
Deny free will, to me, is saying we have absolutely no control over life. We cannot create anything, we cannot think. We would all be mindless creatures on a conveyor belt being transported through life. Then, everything would be predetermined. What would be the point of "living" life? We could not grow, we could not learn. We could replace ourselves with math equations. We could skip right to the end, since we know how it would end, and avoid the misery. We would have no purpose to live.

You got a point. But some people really do believe they are utterly powerless and predetermined. Existentialism. A good great many Existentialists commit suicide... not out of desperation but purely out of principle. they suppose ending it all is their only shot at any kind of Free Will.

That is kind of sad. Wouldn't killing yourself be predetermined too though? If what they believed in was true, then it would be. So their basicly killing themself to try and escape something they don't believe is possible to escape from.

Originally posted by Alric
That is kind of sad. Wouldn't killing yourself be predetermined too though? If what they believed in was true, then it would be. So their basicly killing themself to try and escape something they don't believe is possible to escape from.

well, obviously at that point, they are beyond caring what they prove. They just want off.

Existentialism is unrelievably morbid. Suicide is almost inevitable. Particularly when it occurrs to the most fanatical adherents that all of the Great Existentialists before them had committed suicide. It gets to the point where they must feel like second-string pussies for not offing themselves.

Anyway, my point is not whether or not Determinism and Predestination is True, and Free Will is false or not. My point is that BELIEVING Determinism to be True and Free Will to be false is likely to lead one into a morbid depression that will ultimately lead to suicide. So if you wondering whether to read Sci Fi, Detective Fiction, or Existentialist Philosophy... remember that 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

You guys aren't quite grasping the concept.

Determinism is only depressing to those people who misunderstand it. It does not mean you should kill yourself, it does not mean you should be uncaring, it does not mean existence is pointless. It just is what it is, and that's what it is.

Consider the precise instant in time when you 'make' a 'decision'. At that time, there is only one possible choice you are 'free' to make. All of the possible variables converge to produce the 'decision' or 'choice' you 'make'.

It's really not a difficult concept, and just because you may not want to admit that you have no free will because it sounds like a depressing idea doesn't mean that that isn't the way thnigs are.

Grow the fuck up and deal with it. Jesus.

Originally posted by bradybaker
You guys aren't quite grasping the concept.

Determinism is only depressing to those people who misunderstand it. It does not mean you should kill yourself, it does not mean you should be uncaring, it does not mean existence is pointless. It just is what it is, and that's what it is.

Consider the precise instant in time when you 'make' a 'decision'. At that time, there is only one possible choice you are 'free' to make. All of the possible variables converge to produce the 'decision' or 'choice' you 'make'.

It's really not a difficult concept, and just because you may not want to admit that you have no free will because it sounds like a depressing idea doesn't mean that that isn't the way thnigs are.

Grow the fuck up and deal with it. Jesus.

So all of those Existentialist Philosophers killed themselves because they didin't have your powerful incisive insight into determinism. yeah, right.

No, obviously you never really ever had to make a choice. If you think that you have always had just one way to go, then obviously you have just been drifting through life. Life seems Determined to you, because you've never exerted a choice... you never broke your momentum in one direction and decided to go another way.

And you are happy with it, probably because you have not the imagination to suppose things could be better. The Existentialists had imagination. They could compare their lives to some sense of an unachievable ideal. their morbid sense of hopelessness came from being able to compare their lives to a perfection they could visualize but never achieve. But you are happy because you don't have that vision.

We are listening to a pig telling us of the joys of spashing in a puddle of mud. yes, it makes you happy, but the rest of us would rather have our high standards and some disappointment then to have your low expectations and your easy contentments.

Originally posted by Leo Volont+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Leo Volont)</div>

You don't like Determinism, but your rejection of Free Will gives you no choice.

You must be very young. You must never have had to make a Choice in your life. These Choices that adults make are very far from coming automatically. yes, I understand how Existential Philosophy has plagued the European Intelligencia and still somewhat poisons some circles in America. They can't intellectually get around the idea that choices are not all determined somehow. Their materialism runs so deep that they have lost the sense that the Human Will does not have any inherent inertia... the human will is not necessarily carried along in a straight line.

Be careful with your denial of Will. It largely propelled an entire generation of European Existentialists into committing Suicide -- they felt that Suicide was the only possible expression of Free Will.

Anyway, why would you wish to indulge your sense of inquiry into this dark and morbid Existentialism. Besides being personally dangerous (the suicide rates really do factor a 100 to 1 over the general population) it is gloomy and pessimistic. One morally sleepwalks through life because one has convinced one's self that one has no Choice. We have Existentialists committing incest, and doing the worst drugs, all because their determinism has put them into a momentum driven straight line -- a straight line down. When one discontinues any active control over one's Life Direction, where is there to go but downhill?

Snap out of it.[/b]

Wow. You manage to misunderstand me in the very first sentence of your post, go on to make assumptions about me, and then top it off by saying I'm an existentialist who is going to commit suicide. Allow me to throw the fundation of that post out the window:

I don't dislike determinism, and never said I did. In fact, quite the opposite. What I am saying is that all actions in our lives are predetermined, because we all do what seems best to us. When you have a better, and a worse option, you are unable to choose the worse option. That means your path in life is determined by what you think is best.

Yes, I know that's a long way from depressing, existentialistic determinism. I also realize that 'what is best' may be somewhat free for you to decide (although I am pretty certain you do not have absolute freedom). My point is that true free will is something unexplainable, a dark factor that would somehow throw decisions in a random direction just because. That, to me, is a silly concept, yet I see so many people recoil from anything that only hints to limits to our free will or determinism. I don't see why.

Whether we are determined or not, what does it matter? Does it change the way you experience life? Does it remove your idea of free will from your mind? To me, life is a sensation that I perceive in a certain way. I want to know the truth, yes, but if I discover that I am predetermined, that does not change the fact that I can feel happiness, sadness, or have the idea I can influence my actions. Life is a sensation. Knowledge cannot change a sensation, only the way you look at it.

Originally posted by Leo Volont+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Leo Volont)</div>

My point is that BELIEVING Determinism to be True and Free Will to be false is likely to lead one into a morbid depression that will ultimately lead to suicide.[/b]

See above. You may not be able to cope with the idea that your life is determined. That does not mean the rest of us is.

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Now you can argue that all his decisions are pre programmed from his life experiences , or you can also say he is making an informed decision based on the data he was given .

Exactly. The information that is given to a person does inevitably lead to a certain decision, but is that a bad thing? Because someone had no other choice but to make the right decision, does that make it wrong?

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Deny free will, to me, is saying we have absolutely no control over life. We cannot create anything, we cannot think. We would all be mindless creatures on a conveyor belt being transported through life. Then, everything would be predetermined. What would be the point of "living" life? We could not grow, we could not learn. We could replace ourselves with math equations. We could skip right to the end, since we know how it would end, and avoid the misery. We would have no purpose to live.

Is that the way you feel? No? What if you accept determinism? Does that suddenly turn you into a mindless robot? Nope, it does not.

Originally posted by Leo Volont
No, obviously you never really ever had to make a choice. If you think that you have always had just one way to go, then obviously you have just been drifting through life. Life seems Determined to you, because you've never exerted a choice... you never broke your momentum in one direction and decided to go another way.

"I am older and wiser than you" is not a valid argument. You assume you are the one with the superior insight. If so, you should not have to resort to arguments of authority.