Any one have any argument for free will?

[Introspectre]

Well I was pondering today and I seem to have realized free will doesn't exist. We will always do what has the greatest net pleasure outcome. An example: A rapist chooses between raping a woman and not. He decideds to rape the woman because the rape, even with the chance of being caught and imprisoned, is more pleasurable than not raping the woman and not going to prison. If a kid decides to smoke weed instead of doing homework, his mind at the moment judges that smoking the weed will be more enjoyable than the results of doing his homework. Yeah, so I've actually become quite depressed about this realization and was wondering if anyone had a convincing argument for free will?? thnx.

[Howie]

So you are saying we are not responsible for our actions, no accountability? Absurd.

[Introspectre]

If we don't have free will then no. My thinking is kind of confusing but isn't every dicision the result of calculating risk and gain? Give me an example of an action that wasn't decided by that equation.

[Howie]

Originally posted by Introspectre If we don't have free will then no. My thinking is kind of confusing but isn't every dicision the result of calculating risk and gain? Give me an example of an action that wasn't decided by that equation. Risk or gain still does not negate choice. Unless you feel it is a predetermined choice. But we have preemptive thought. We can calculate what is good and bad and still choose something such as philanthropy or charity over ones own wealth. I understand that this is a instant gratification society. However each person can make a decision. Example: My father was beaten by his father and as a result he beat his son. I then was beaten by my father. I now , having a son choose NOT to take the path that my family past has provided. This was my freedom of thought and choice.

[resonate]

what you are describing, is free will. when all decisions are based on your mind calculating risk and gain, without any outside force, then that is free will. you are deciding for yourself. without free will, all decisions would've been already made and you would have no say. if we all have a pre-determined destiny, i don't think we would always make the decision that would always be most beneficial or pleasurable, it would always be the decision to keep us on the path to our destiny.

[Introspectre]

We can calculate what is good and bad and still choose something such as philanthropy or charity over ones own wealth[/b] Yeah but when you are doing that, it is because to you chariy is better and will make you feel better....maybe resonate is right, but it still seems like determinism. Actually when I think about it I can't imagine free will, that is a decision that isn't random but also isn't decided by an equation...

[Howie]

Originally posted by Introspectre We can calculate what is good and bad and still choose something such as philanthropy or charity over ones own wealth Yeah but when you are doing that, it is because to you chariy is better and will make you feel better....maybe resonate is right, but it still seems like determinism.[/b] Very Very True. This is a common misconception about charity. Most people have a deep seeded need to make themselves feel better. Charity is often their decision. Sad but true. This is an awareness of human nature. I do agree with you that our human ego feeds on itself. But the ego does not have to thrive. In fact you can stamp out the selfish egoic entity by ---> free choice. A true liberated individual would give for the sake of giving. Nothing more

[Introspectre]

A true liberated individual would give for the sake of giving. Nothing more [/b] Amazing point.

[Distant Clone]

Originally posted by Introspectre Actually when I think about it I can't imagine free will, that is a decision that isn't random but also isn't decided by an equation... How do we choose what equation we use to decide?

[Ancient Of Days]

When you say that there is no free will. It is half false. And half true. Check out my thread for more information. The topic is being discussed. Free will exists because you are able to make decisions. But free will does not exist because no-one is above cause and effect. "free will" and "no free will" is the same truth in different perceptions or degrees of perception.

[Introspectre]

How do we choose what equation we use to decide? [/b] Well before Howetzer's response the equation for deciding action, in my opinion, was gain over loss. Or net pleasure/happiness. But Howetzer makes a great observation that when something is done because it is known to be right and not done to give any type of pleasure or satisfaction to the doer it is a free action. And Ancient of Days u make a good point aswell. *EDIT* An example....You have the choice of living a good life completely happy or you can die and save the life of someone who just spit in your face. Now if you believe sacrificing yourself for someone else is right, even though it is unlikely you will choose the second action, if you did so your action would be free? Make sense to any one?

[Howie]

Originally posted by Ancient Of Days When you say that there is no free will. It is half false. And half true. Check out my thread for more information. The topic is being discussed. Free will exists because you are able to make decisions. But free will does not exist because no-one is above cause and effect. "free will" and "no free will" is the same truth in different perceptions or degrees of perception. I know of the discussion you are talking about ---> Discussion of truth However. Point out it's relevance please. I put my two cents in. But making every topic a hypothetical point is mute. Everything can be looked upon in an abstract manner. Everything. There is no point. I exist You don't exist Half true half not. I believe you believe there is no believe. It is all theoretical

[Ancient Of Days]

It's relevance is that Introspectre was talking about free will existing. And I was pointing out how it's true and false. Which is what the thread I made was about.

[Original Poster]

Argument against free will: The original design of the universe and every action hence was designated by the arrangment of the particles in the big bang, or in whatever substance other contradicting theories exercise as the original. Nothing is done specifically out of net pleasure, it is, however, predcided as the brain is more or less a machine that takes in stimuli and computes reactions based on chemical reactions and individual neuro networking. In other words, the human brain is like a wall in Isaac Neuton's terms, the action of throwing a ball at the wall gives the equal and opposite reaction of absorbing some of the energy into the wall, and rebounding the rest into the precise angle designated. The human brain takes information from the senses and train of thought or whatever other things are given a part in the decision making process, and certain chemical reactions are bound to happen, thought itself is merely these predestined chemical reactions, based originally on simple simple physics and chemistry, therefore you've already amde all your decisions. In short, imagine dropping a ball onto the top of a triangular prism, without any physical effects like weather or aging coming into play, and the ball being dropped completely unibiased of either side of the prism, it will end up balacing on top, something you would never see in the real world thanks to chaos theory. Argument for free will: No scientists have ever correctly mapped out the observer in the brain. It's possible that the stream of copnsciousness, the hidden rece4ptionist in the vessel all this information is sent to, and all actions come out of, is something completely void of all chemical, physical and even biological laws. If this were true people could be acting out of a place entirelky unchallenged by these problems.

[Ancient Of Days]

Decisions are possible. You can prove this both right and wrong. No scientist has ever managed to predict the path of a rat through a maze. Let alone what we will decide. Nothing is predictable with choice. That's why everything is so predictable. Cause and effect. We can't beat it. I control the cause. Then I realize I am the effect. "the problem is choice" - the matrix

[mongreloctopus]

free will is just ignorance of the future. whether or not you can "choose" your fate is irrelevant--the end result is the same.

[Alric]

I have done stuff even though I gain no pleasure from it. You saying you never been nice to someone who you think is annoying or something? What if your never going to see that person, would feel real nice to tell them to shut up and theres no down side to it. People don't though because their not rude. Or charity, some person comes up to you on the street and ask you for a few dollars and your like "oh man I don't want to give them any money", but you do anyway but you don't feel good about it because your cheap or greedy and you just lost money.

[jjm121]

Originally posted by Ancient Of Days No scientist has ever managed to predict the path of a rat through a maze. Let alone what we will decide. No scientist has predicted what course a rat in a maze will take... because he is not the rat. ANYWHO. A quote that sums up free will. Sort of. Draw your own conclusions, this is my favorite quote on the subject. "In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of god. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustin, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if god already knows in advance everything we're going to do. Nowadays, we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. These laws, because they are so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water. And our behavior isn't going to be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether it's god setting things up in advance, and knowing everything you're going to do, or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom. So you might try to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will, and say, oh well, it's just an historical anecdote, it's sophomoric, it's a question with no answer, just forget about it. But the question keeps staring you in the face. Think about individuality for example. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired and respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back. And we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade. Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain, your neurons fire, they send a signal down into your nervous system, it passes along down into your muscle fibers, they twitch, you might reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every part of that process is actually governed by physical laws, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on. "

[jjm121]

Also, yes i have been nice to a person that i find completely creepy. Cause: I dont want them to get upset, angry, etc. Effect: They dont get upset, angry, etc. You cant use this scenario to accurately showcase free will.

[LunarMoon]

Cause and effect cancels out free will. Assuming that all events are the product of an extremely large string of events stemming from the beginning of the universe, we could state that all things, assuming that all variables are taken into account (impossible for humans), are inevitable and predictable. For example, say that you were to flip a coin and it landed as heads. Though it appears to be a stroke of luck, the reason the coin actually landed as heads was because of such variables as the exact manner you threw it in, the density of the air, the gravity of the body on which you’re on (assuming Earth), and several other variables. With these variables in line, it was mathematically inevitable that the coin would fall onto heads and with all of these variables taken to account, it would surely be possible to predict the result of the coin toss before it happened. The coin flip in turn did not happen as a result if luck but due to a string of events in itself. For example, the reason you flipped the coin with your friend in the first place was in order to decide who would choose the TV channel. This in turn of course happened as a result of you meeting your friend in the first place, which also happened due several events that transpired before that; this is cause and affect. In summarization, you may be familiar with a similar philosophy if you’ve noted the methods of the Oracle from The Matrix. From this we need to get into the question brought up by quantum physics that basically appears to throw away the suppose predictability of the universe with randomness. However, this is less about randomness and more about the fact that your observation of these laws causes the subatomic particles to react in a different way than they would otherwise; this is also cause and effect. After all, if the universe was truly built on randomness and luck, we could expect the chance of someone simply being transported to Mars as they stepped out the door to actually be present. In summarization, the great hold of cause and effect is what causes me to state that universe is indeed predictable and is therefore governed by fate.

[Distant Clone]

We use our free will to cause things to happen.

[Leo Volont]

Free Will is intuitively obvious. Ordinary people simply assume that they are making real choices and decisions. But those who think too much develop some difficulty and doubts regarding their possibilities. Traditionally the Religious Minded would use the Argument of God's Absolute Powers to assert that the Self could not have any Self Will without subtracting from the Divine Will, and that God could not be All Powerful and still leave any power to any Individual. So God is blamed for everything for the sake of consistency in arguments based on Absolutes. Well, that is all very stupid. As any honest person can readily observe, there are NO absolutes. One can IMAGINE absolutes, but can never point to a single concrete instance or example. So it becomes idiotic to base any serious argument on the requirement that some absolute, that nowhere exists in reality, should never be contradicted. Then we have the argument of Mechanics to refute Free Will. There, the Materialists, particularly the Existentialists, argue that physics once set in motion cannot be diverted, and that any appearance of choice or decision is illusory. This argument from Mechanical Determinism would have more validity accept for recent studies concerning quantum mechanics, wave theory, and statistical analysis. You see, at the molecular and atomic levels it is not at all certain what every particle will do. General Behaviors and System Dynamics can be predicted with some level of certainty, but NOT the movements of individual particles, where it can only be anticipated that a proportion will go one way, and a proportion will go another. As an example we can refer to American Politics where about 50% will vote for Moral and Decent Human Beings and the other approximate half will vote Republicans. That, anymore, is a statistical and demographic certainty. But even contrained within that confining model of reality, each voting American has a real choice. Oh, which reminds me of something. We hear that so few Americans vote. This is considered a sign that Americans do not care about politics. Well, that is a most mistaken assumption. The Truth is that those who register to vote are made eligable for Jury Duty which is compulsory for those who are selected. Well, this is universally regarded as greatly inconvenient. The Americans have an expression -- "Too dumb to get out of Jury Duty". Anyone called away from Work to sit on a Jury is considered to be something of an idiot. Then consider that the one sure way of never being summoned for Jury Duty is to never ever register to vote. Now, if the Americans would only make Jury Duty optional -- to allow people the Freedom to say no to it -- then the voting Rates would go up to the 90 percentiles. But while America still insists upon using the Vote to round up slave-labor Jury Panelists, then voting rates will remain low. People are too smart to vote under such constraints and theats.

[Ancient Of Days]

Words are creative. Nice artwork everyone.

[Introspectre]

Also, yes i have been nice to a person that i find completely creepy. Cause: I dont want them to get upset, angry, etc. Effect: They dont get upset, angry, etc[/b] My point was you did that because the effect, him not getting angry, was more desirable than keeping the money.

[Original Poster]

Originally posted by mongreloctopus free will is just ignorance of the future. whether or not you can "choose" your fate is irrelevant--the end result is the same. I'd kind of like to take my shot at disagreeing. What you described seems very similar to early existentialism arguments, and if that were the case any cynicism I may have perceived might be ill-found. But, I like to look at life as a sort of machine, just as humans are made up of little living and dying machines constantly replenishing themselves and feeding and so on, the entire biosphere is made up of little organisms that exist in their various interconnected systems and feed and die and replenish. As a friend once said to me, "You know what'll happen in 110 years? All new people." That's a bit of a parallel to the "7 years for humans to be made up of completely different cells" thing. So, while the end result of every individual organism is the same, we're still only cells in a much longer living little blue dot, but more specifically I'd like to focus on human societies, one giant network of people that pretend to be isolated from each other, on this blue dot. Our actions in life, our character, the choices we make that decide what person we become, profoundly effect the world around us, not just the environment, but even more profoundly the society, the character of individual humans that bear witness or hold a part in events that make up our lives. In that sense, free choice is not an illusion, it's something of incredible consequence to people who will outlive you. And sure, there's the argument that even the earth won't live forever, and that even if humans managed to populate the universe, plenty of theories say that won't live forever, either. But that's an extended argument I choose not to look at because it poses the question of "what's the point of living?" which is something I believe that humans simply lack the cognitive ability to answer. Okay, now for the rest of you. People have been making the aargument of cause and effect being the ultimate contradiction of fate. If you look at history, modern science is ultimately wrong in many areas, not that they were flatly wrong, or their theories untrue, but that tradition fought against truth, that people got too set in their beliefs to look at other possibilities, and that people failed to widen their perspective on what is and what isn't. I'm not saying there is no cause and effect, there obviously is, at least in one perception of the universe. I'm just saying there's probably a lot more complexity to the mechanics of the universe (or to existence if there exists anything beyond this plane of reality) than humans have, as of yet, uncovered, for us to be making snappy conclusions about what is and what isn't. I mean, it was that sort of thinking that made it take so long for Darwinism to become engrained in science. In short I'm saying there is the possibility of forces, universal laws that exist outside of physical laws. This was a bit of a ramble but I hope it wasn't completely irrelevant.