Thread: Freewill

Originally Posted by phasemancer

It depends on whether physics is deterministic or not. Quantum mechanics suggests it is probabilistic rather than deterministic, but then again, there's still a lot we don't know about physics.

If it's deterministic, everything could in theory be calculated and you could in theory know what you'll be doing at an exact moment in 50 years. If it's not deterministic, then it can't be calculated, you can only make guesses, which will shortly diverge far from what actually happens.

I believe that the universe is probabilistic. But that doesn't imply freewill. I think determinism is ridiculous because it depends on impossible hypotheticals to even converse about. I don't agree that the hypothetical deterministic scenarios are even possible in this universe.

But that still doesn't imply any sort of freewill. Freewill is based upon false assumptions about identity. We are a colony with a cognitive factor evolved in order to reduce dissonance. What you call your "will" or "soul" is merely a program we developed to work out inconsistencies in our conditioning. We are still going to make the best decision possible.

I do believe in choice to some extent, but when I talk about choice, I talk about the choice to stop, or to continue. When I talk about choice, I am not trying to imply any sort of control, only resistance. True control comes from surrender. You have the choice to face things or hide from things. To be attentive on the present or to run and chase.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

I believe that the universe is probabilistic. But that doesn't imply freewill. I think determinism is ridiculous because it depends on impossible hypotheticals to even converse about. I don't agree that the hypothetical deterministic scenarios are even possible in this universe.

But that still doesn't imply any sort of freewill. Freewill is based upon false assumptions about identity. We are a colony with a cognitive factor evolved in order to reduce dissonance. What you call your "will" or "soul" is merely a program we developed to work out inconsistencies in our conditioning. We are still going to make the best decision possible.

I do believe in choice to some extent, but when I talk about choice, I talk about the choice to stop, or to continue. When I talk about choice, I am not trying to imply any sort of control, only resistance. True control comes from surrender. You have the choice to face things or hide from things. To be attentive on the present or to run and chase.

I guess it depends on how you define free will.

If I get a choice, to move my left arm or my right arm, then what are the conditions required that the decision was made by free will?

In my opinion what would happen is that a neural signal would start and it has two stable states it can reach, one leading to the left arm being moved and the other leading to the right arm being moved. Which state it would stabilize in would essentially be random, if there was no bias caused by any input, memories etc.

Is this free will? It has a certain degree of freedom since the action may have a 50/50 chance of going either way, and if you had made the decision again, another decision could have been made. But, one could argue that the decision was caused by the random movement atoms, acting pretty much as a random number generator, ultimately causing either your left or right hand to move.

I think maybe the concept of free will (or not free will) doesn't even make sense to begin with.

We make decisions based on our desires, memories, sensory input etc. Our brain is pretty much a kind of computer which tries to figure out how to satisfy our desires, and it makes the decisions we want, in some way, and I'm not sure it makes that much sense to label these decisions as free or non-free.