• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: Xorkoth | Madness

Free Will... & Is Everyone an NPC if there is no free will?

@Skorpio very well said my friend, one of the most concise and detailed views I've seen on such a subject

I can't help but feel that I've adopted your view as a better version of what I've always felt
 
Pure, or should I say, true randomness isn't important only for cryptography, but also if I want to believe in free will. I have not studied QM, but it seems that many physicists in the field believe in non-predictable systems without hidden variables, from what I tried to google and read.
This randomness (probabilities) in QM observations may not be pure and true per se, but it's interesting anyway, if it could in a sense justify a believe in the possibility of free non-deterministic will.
@Skorpio: If you don't maintain believe in free will, what implications it has in your life? Can you, for example, really ever regret anything? Will planning things feel a little stupid, because it's not really planning, but a predefined thinking process you can't control, nor the outcomes of things you're planning.
 
Last edited:
It's an interesting question, not least because of the reciprocal relation between consciousness and free will. If you believe that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, then it has no causal power and free will is not possible. If you believe that what goes on inside consciousness can affect physical processes (i.e. you are a dualist), then free will is on the table.

If you're someone like me who desires evolutionary reasons for why biological things are the way they are, then consciousness needs to be explained from the viewpoint of evolution. This is where it gets tricky, because for consciousness to positively (or negatively) affect replication and/or survival, it should have causal power! The epiphenomenalist might argue that the neural correlates of consciousness in themselves had evolutionary value, and consciousness got taken along for the ride as a passive observer, but I find that argument rather contrived.

I find it quite strange and paradoxical that Darwinian principles suggest dualism. Unfortunately the dualist approach requires new interactions between consciousness and physical objects, interactions which provide no predictive power and only satisfy a psychological itch. This approach isn't in the spirit of Occam's razor, and it's also exceedingly ad hoc. In the causally closed framework of classical mechanics this wouldn't have even been an option, but QM seems to lend some slack in this regard.

As far the implications of having or not having free will, I tend not to worry about that much. There's a very ironic quote (ironic in the sense that it's peddler has much to learn from it) that I find quite relevant here: Facts don't care about your feelings. In other words, beliefs have no bearing on ontology, so one should strive for the truest and most consistent possible interpretation of the world. Of course beliefs do impact psychological health (which in turn demonstrably affects physical health), so in the absence of evidence which breaks the symmetry between contrasting beliefs, be vigilant and choose the one with higher valence.

In the end I guess I'm undecided on free will, insofar as a consistent meaning can even be conveyed by such a loaded term. I put a high credence in the truthfulness of known physical laws, but I don't believe they currently provide a complete and coherent description of both the physical and mental realms. Why can my mood alter my physical functioning? If the conscious experience has no causal power, why should there at all be any correlation between the content of my perception and the state of its biological substrate? Another example is the difference between voluntary and autonomic muscle control. It gives me serious cognitive dissonance to believe that a false impression of volition is the only difference between these muscle movements. There must be something deeper going on, there must be a division somewhere.
 
darkkoon said:
If you don't maintain believe in free will, what implications it has in your life? Can you, for example, really ever regret anything? Will planning things feel a little stupid, because it's not really planning, but a predefined thinking process you can't control, nor the outcomes of things you're planning.
Click to expand...
I certainly don't know how events in the future will turn out, so my actions are probably conceived in the same way anybodies are; i do what i think is best (usually, though i am of course not immune to doing things for the wrong reason, such as gtfo idm when it is probably non-beneficial in the long term).

I really don't have any hesitation or apprehension about my actions (wrt free will and all), because i feel like i have free will. I have no foreknowledge of what the future will hold, and just try to live a life i want to live.
 
Feel you, bro. We probably live in same illusion. However, if I were to accept there's no free will, it would really mean I can't anymore feel sorry or bad for former mistakes and happenstances. Now, that I dwell in the illusion of free will, and let the chance live, I can still regret past doings. There's an interesting subtle difference.
 
Nice post @Skorpio.

I'll just add a little less politely - anyone who doesn't believe that free will is an illusion, could you please try to define the mechanism of choice as anything other than a computational process based on one's experiences in life, and innate tendencies? (Innate tendencies, obviously, are not freely chosen.) I have never once seen anyone manage to do this.

Also - it should be obvious that the illusory nature of free will has pretty much zero consequence whatsoever as far as how we should live our lives. Whether or not the mechanism of choice is in fact a deterministic one (randomness being involved or not - something can be random and still deterministic, and a random choice is not a "free" one, by most people's definition, in any case), we still have to go through the motions. We still have to make choices. It's not an illusion that we can escape, and thus, every other connected but equally illusory aspect of the self remains just as relevant as it ever was. We are living within the illusion - it doesn't matter if it's an illusion.

The only area in which recognition of the illusion of free will can make a difference is in helping one to accept the inevitability of mistakes made in the past, and the causative factors that lead to these choices. But this requires a nuanced approach, it's not enough to simply dismiss any past error of judgement as something that was going to happen anyway (even if it is true) because then we would never learn to make better choices in the future. In fact, I'd argue that too much recognition of the illusory nature of free will is usually, or at least, quite often not a good thing, as it can quite easily lead to a far too fatalistic approach to life. But the decision to react to this aspect of reality in this way is itself a choice that we all must choose to make. Illusion or not - we cannot escape it. Discussions about whether free will is illusory or not have academic value and value in helping people come to terms with choices they - and only they (OK, sometimes others, but again, that is a very nuanced discussion) have made - they have, probably, close to zero value in being any kind of guide for how one should live in the future.
 
Lately I've swung back into the camp of no free will. We are the universe, observing the deterministic march towards equilibrium. Entropy is becoming more and more of a bitch, but I can't be mad, if she hadn't started low I'd have nothing to show.
 
I
birdup said:
As far as I understand: there is actually no such thing as randomness. Mathematically, it doesn't exist. I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in nature, either... It only exists in theory.

@darkkoon
Tell me something that is truly random.
Click to expand...
Isn't all of existence random?
 
I think the derivatives in nature like roots are both based on chaos - their structure for example.. and on order.. the fact that the tree must support it self from the roots up..
 
AbbeyLee said:
Click to expand...

Electricity is the real fingerprint of God. From our cells right up to the galactic environment, electricity is what really shapes everything and what binds everything together into an indivisible whole. It's a physical argument against free will - if everything is electrically connected then by definition you can not be free of its influence.

“The day we shall know exactly what “electricity” is, will chronicle an event probably greater, more important than any other recorded in the history of the human race." - Nikola Tesla
 
-=SS=- said:
Electricity is the real fingerprint of God. From our cells right up to the galactic environment, electricity is what really shapes everything and what binds everything together into an indivisible whole. It's a physical argument against free will - if everything is electrically connected then by definition you can not be free of its influence.

“The day we shall know exactly what “electricity” is, will chronicle an event probably greater, more important than any other recorded in the history of the human race." - Nikola Tesla
Click to expand...

I don't really know where free will fits into all of this. The best argument I've seen against it is this clip from True Detective.

I still love the fractal, microcosm/microcosm, "as above/so below" stuff regardless ☺️


 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top