Thread: A time traveler from the future confirmed to me that free will is an illusion...

I'm going to go back to watching my youtube videos

Did he say anything about time paradoxes? Timelines perhaps? How did he time travel? Did he come, because of a conCERN in the future? (anyone got that reference?)
So many questions! Perhaps I should stop watching so much anime..

Originally Posted by MrPriority

Did he say anything about time paradoxes? Timelines perhaps? How did he time travel? Did he come, because of a conCERN in the future? (anyone got that reference?)
So many questions! Perhaps I should stop watching so much anime..

Here, have a Dr. Pepper on me.



As for the question, if free will is an illusion, then I can't decide what to do next. Which might be best because I'm not sure what I'd do in such a situation, besides hanging out with the time traveler that is.

Even if you are from the future doesn't mean you know everything. I don't think it confirms he's right just because he is from the future.

A time traveler from the future confirmed to me that free will is an illusion...

I actually agree with that statement. Everyone is always bound to their current believes, and the free will as we see it. Are only free within it's current belief pattern. So everyone is actually stuck to act in the way that their feelings resonate.

LOL. Great thread. But free will still exists.

Well he could be lying, and like Mismagius said if it's true then I can't really do anything with that knowlage...

I'd probably have my mind blown again and then move on. I don't think free will should impact how we live our lives but it does present some philosophical implications for the direction of our civilization. Choices are still choices whether free will is there or not, its just that they are predetermined in one scenario lol. Crazy.

If I have free will I will do what I choose, if I don't I'll go on believing I have a choice anyway because I have no choice.

Do everything in your power to prevent time travel in the first place. If you succeed, you may cause a paradox, but at least you probably proved him wrong. And if you fail, its not necessarily proof that he's right, either.

In the end, we should act as though we do have free will. That way, if its true, we haven't wasted it.

Did you get to have a look inside of his police box?

Now release all resistance, for if free will is an illusion, there's no reason in worrying whether you will make the best choice for yourself. You cannot control or affect your own happiness through interaction with the outside world, so there's nothing to pursue. All doubt and belief mean nothing, for no amount of truth and or data you grapple to will have any effect on your life. Your action in the present becomes the meaning itself, as anything that arises from that action is out of your control. And the action itself is only meaningful in so far as whether it is helpful or harmful. Once the helpfulness and harmfulness has been deciphered, what being should choose harmfulness? What being chooses to harm itself? It is only through ignorance that we choose to suffer, but even this is an action in pursuit of the opposite.

It is not a belief in freewill that causes suffering, only belief that you can control outcomes with your actions, as well as the belief that what you think about these outcomes is the complete truth. Release your action from its expectation, and your beliefs from the truth, and you may find freedom. The meaning invested in illusion is the only shackle. There is nothing more liberating than joining your purpose with God, and nothing more imprisoning than usurping that will with your own.

Just to annoy him and also because it's a great song, I would have belted out the chorus from:

Can't listen to the chorus...

I read this excellent article by Daniel Dennett - a critique of a book of Sam Harris on free will, in which Harris denies any existence of such a psychological phenomenon worthy of the name.
That's not so - the supposedly so simplistic public notion about free will is not exactly the old religious or generally dualistic views. Mine is not.
I know well enough about neurobiology to not delude myself, but there's a position more sophisticated than that and than Harris' - compatibilism. Read this if you want to know, what I think makes sense in this topic:

Daniel Dennett, Reflections on Free Will

More stuff: Free Will

Out of curiosity, how does one "confirm" that free will is an illusion anyway?

Generally speaking, I believe we have the degree of free will we allow ourselves. The more present we are in The Now, the more free will we experience.

If you life as if you had a free will you will always be fine. For example I choose option A instead of B, whether that was predetermined or not, I still choose option A and as long as I don't feel like I was forced to choose A it doesn't matter. I hope you understand even though it's a little vague.

I think one's level of awareness of all things determines one's potential for "free will".

Philosophers realised ages ago that "free will" has multiple meanings, and so all arguments are pointless and this question has no answer until you actually explain what you mean by free will. Which nobody here has done.

How about the freedom to act without manipulation or influence from one's own emotions, animalistic drives, intuitive feelings, and the actions, words, and behaviors of others? In this case, it is not possible to be entirely free from such influences.

How about the freedom to choose to do something (not in a situation where one's hand is forced or passion overrides rational and conscious thought, i.e. you pick a, b, c, or d)? This one appears to be more in line with what most people would define free will as, and it is possible. In this scenario free will is not a "have" or "have not" (at least not 100% of the time, you have it at some points of time but not others, more specifically), there is a grey area. However, if one subscribes to a deterministic view, then this is impossible and is merely an illusion. Depending on one's beliefs, the topic isn't worth discussing unless for the sake of argument one can suspend disbelief and entertain the idea that what he or she may believe to be impossible is, in fact, possible.

That last part is not so clear. I think you may be tacitly using two different definitions of "free will". They may be dependent, but that requires demonstration.

On the one hand, "free will" is often used to refer to the act of making a choice, free from coercion -- that is, to have several options placed before you, and to select one of them, via a process of rational deliberation; of weighing up the pros and cons of the consequences of each.

On the other hand, "free will" is sometimes used to refer to performing an act that was independent of the external world prior to it; in other words, an act with no physical cause.

The first definition is the definition you spoke of, and I agree that it's possible. But I'd go further than "possible": it's indubitably the case. It's a matter of common experience, and a plain fact of neuroscience, that humans do have this capacity, and do exercise it. So by this definition, free will is "real". Crucially, it is not contradicted by determinism. The first definition makes no reference to causality. The fact that the outcome of a choice was fixed at a prior time would not contradict the fact that a choice, as we defined choice, has indeed occurred. There was nothing in the definition that demanded a choice be "unpredictable" or "random" -- in fact these are close to synonymous with "irrational" or "idiotic", which if anything seems contrary to the idea of choice than complimentary to it. Only when we ascribe to the second definition, which I think you may have done tacitly at the end, does determinism have a bearing on the issue: indeed, determinism would patently make the second definition of free will impossible.

Originally Posted by Denziloe

On the other hand, "free will" is sometimes used to refer to performing an act that was independent of the external world prior to it; in other words, an act with no physical cause.

That isn't correct. A human is a physical thing. So if a human acts independent of the external world, he would be acting based on their internal world. Ie their brain. Their brain would be the physical cause. As long as a human is making choices based off what they are thinking inside of their own brain, they would have both free will and a physical cause. Since the physical cause is coming from a physical object internal to the person. After all, what else is a person but the summation of their body?

I was simply stating a definition. That's not the same thing as asserting that the definition holds in reality.