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Free will vs. Determinism

Foreigner

Foreigner

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Do we have the freedom to choose or is out fate somehow pre-determined?

Is there a master blueprint running our lives, whether it be by the divine hand or some higher self calling the shots? Is what ego wants really relevant to what is actually going to happen? More materially, do systems and natural confines prevent us from exercising true freedom?

On the flipside, do we have total control over our choices, regardless of constaining systems? Is free will something we are born with or is it something learned? Do we have to unlearn systems of (self-)governance before we re-realize that we are free?

Discuss.
 
Was I destined to make this post?
What about hitting these keys?
I feel in control.
I can type whatever I want.
But what makes me want?

Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. - an angry german guy (schopenhauer)
 
I'm not too sure.

Einstein believed in determinsm but then Heisenberg comes along and says no! There is uncertainty.. we can't know where a particle is / it's speed as when we look at it we move it, change it's direction or speed..

But I really don't see how that debunks it. It may make it impossible for us to map out the universe so we could use determinsm as a means to look back into the past or into the future.. But those particles are there and they are doing their thing.

I was literally thinking about this this morning.. and was even going to start a thread on it ;)
 
And adding some other questions:

1. Does freedom = freedom of the WILL = freedom of the INDIVIDUAL will?

2. Does freedom = autonomy (auto-nomos; self-determination) = being independent of heteronomy (laws imposed by otherness)?

3. Does freedom = being independent of the (deterministic) movements of the particles which constitute our material embodiment = (mutatis mutandi) being independent of brainchemistry?

4. Does freedom = moral freedom = i.e. the freedom to do good/bad?

5. Does freedom = an "act of freedom" or a "state of freedom"? Or is it a "process of becoming-free"? (e.g. overcoming substance dependence)

6. Is freedom compatible with determinism, or are they mutually exclusive?

7. Is freedom = modal contingency? (i.e. many different worlds must have been possible, or put more carefully: a different world could have been actualized).
 
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IMO it is a combination of both and I'd like to give an example:

If a person was born extremely poor and has limited resources, there is a possibility that he can become successful through hard work and dedication to change his status in life. Let's say he started up a business and it became very successful worldwide, it is then fate that put him through that achievement and not only hard work as there are businesses that fail.
 
Business doesn't work on fate, Maya. Not all money is earned through "hard work", either. Success is not in the ikea catalogue and money does not dictate ones wealth.
I think a talent would be a better example, but even then it's off hand.

You're in control, right. You can do whatever you want, but where's the desire coming from?
Here I am bashing away at these keys, and the infinite things I could express, but of all the options what makes me decide?
What is controlling/influencing me?
 
If youre going to create a topic about such an over-arching subject, chances are it will dilute what your multiple points. "Discuss" tag should be banned from the forum and thats my authoritarian, non-philosophical view.

Tell me what you think, Foreigner, then I can respond not to a topic but a point of view. Other-wise I can essay the world and no one would give a shit.


Going off some initial responses I can understand the tones of where Abject and Maya are coming from. I always felt, however, "Free-will" was an invalid question. Whether or not I have freedom either an esoteric or physics basis doesnt really impress me or make me think much about what the age old "Free-will" question is. What I can do is my job within a degree of freedom that allows the laws of nature to work.

Is it a coincidence that most people born in America speak English and most people born in Thailand will speak Thai and have a greater propensity to fuck small children? Thats not a question of free-will.
 
Spoo said:
If youre going to create a topic about such an over-arching subject, chances are it will dilute what your multiple points. "Discuss" tag should be banned from the forum and thats my authoritarian, non-philosophical view.

Tell me what you think, Foreigner, then I can respond not to a topic but a point of view. Other-wise I can essay the world and no one would give a shit.
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I did that intentionally because I don't like starting topics with my personal view so that it keeps things nice and open. It's not about me. Will add my viewpoint later.
 
Abject said:
Business doesn't work on fate, Maya. Not all money is earned through "hard work", either. Success is not in the ikea catalogue and money does not dictate ones wealth.
I think a talent would be a better example, but even then it's off hand.

You're in control, right. You can do whatever you want, but where's the desire coming from?
Here I am bashing away at these keys, and the infinite things I could express, but of all the options what makes me decide?
What is controlling/influencing me?
Click to expand...

I gave an example and there are other examples you can provide so feel free to disagree.

We have control of ourselves, some of us have talents so let's say you are a singer and you started in early in your life but did not have any success at doing it no matter how hard you tried. However, there are other singers who became very successful. Won't it be the same as having a business and not being very successful like other businesses?

We mostly have control of our lives, we choose where we want to be but there are some people who are in the right place at the right time so they are in better places and have better status than most of us. The desire is coming from you, your uniqueness amongst everyone around you.
 
Abject said:
What is controlling/influencing me?
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The state of all energy in the universe a split second before the current, and so on.. The location and velocity of all particles in the known universe.. imo, a are all headed for the same place, no matter how many times you rewind the universe, they will continue on the same paths. This goes for particles that make you and your brain up, too.

I don't believe in fate (so to speak) or a higher being that has mapped it out.. but i can't see why Einstein was wrong.

Determinism is a metaphysical philosophical position stating that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given those conditions, nothing else could happen. "There are many determinisms, depending upon what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event."[1] Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse motives and considerations, some of which overlap. Some forms of determinism can be tested empirically with ideas stemming from physics and the philosophy of physics. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism). Determinism is often contrasted with free will.[2]
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If you had the intellect or computational power AND means of knowing the location of all particles and their velocities: (Ignoring Heisnbergs uncertainty principle)

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.
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Everything in the universe is basically following a line of 3d dominoes.. or a butterfly affect type thing..
 
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I think Free Will and Determinism are compatible; some experiences in our lives are basically pre-determined, but our ability to choose the outcome (sometimes) is also present.

This idea is called Compatibilism and has been held by more than a few philosophers over the ages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
 
I honestly don't think we have the kind of free will that most think of..

Ignoring determinsm, everything my brain does is out of my control.. it may give an illusion of free will when i decide to buy something but ultimately it's a process going on inside my brain that i have no control over.. subconscious things surrounding memory, past experience, pro's and con's, desire for one or the other, etc that will then manifest itself into a conscious decision.

We are a product of the split second preceeding the present.
 
My thoughts, briefly (I've discussed this before on here somewhere):

Okay. To be clear, I think that we want to about free-will in a strict, causal metaphysical respect, so vague macroscopic conceptions about general ability of selves to act differently in similar situations won't work as an argument.

I would define freewill as the ability of the conscious mind to causally affect behavior, driven solely by its internal structure and characteristics. Since the "unconscious mind"* (it's been established that the brain processes a lot of information outside of our awareness) shapes what desires, whims, urges, and thoughts pop into the conscious mind, and this is all causally effected by the state of the organism and environment, we don't have free will in the sense I described.

*I mean this in a wide sense: all bodily-neural flows of information outside of awareness.

I am also partial to a particular compatiblist conception of free will: despite consciousness having been wrought of physical (mostly neurological) causes, the structure of information in consciousness and 'pre-consciousness' are not material in the sense usually considered, and they comprise a system with its own internal logic. So the presence or absence of free or determinism depend on which ontological/epistemological layer of the human system we're looking at.

ebola
 
It is thinking and judgement under uncertainty that is at question here, in my opinion. Many thoughts, and resulting decisions, are based on beliefs of likelihoods of uncertain events; people will communicate "i think that...", "it is most likely...".

It has been shown that many people make decisions based on heuristic principles that reduce a task in complexity so that simpler judgemental operations are used instead of assessing probabilities; that is how a human brain generally works. What we see is generalised to make assumptions, and often these lead to systematic errors.

The subjective nature of probability resembles physical quantities such as size and distance, or even time depending on one's scientific views. These ways of thinking result in biases, insensitivity to predictability, misconceptions, illusions of validity, etc.

So is it free will or determinism? This will remain open for debate for some time... ;)
 
we are in the cockpit of a plane. it is running on autopilot. we are occasionally roused by an alarm and adjust the destination co-ordinates. the plane does the rest.

eventually we either run out of fuel or into a mountain.

i can't put it more succinctly than that.
 
rickolasnice said:
I honestly don't think we have the kind of free will that most think of..

Ignoring determinsm, everything my brain does is out of my control.. it may give an illusion of free will when i decide to buy something but ultimately it's a process going on inside my brain that i have no control over.. subconscious things surrounding memory, past experience, pro's and con's, desire for one or the other, etc that will then manifest itself into a conscious decision.

We are a product of the split second preceeding the present.
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The subconscious analysis of past experience, weighing of pro's and con's, consideration of the desire for on or the other, etc does not simply manifest into a conscious decision. It serves as a framework off of which we base our conscious decision.

Example: When I walk into a convenience store my brain doesn't subconsciously run through all my past experiences with soda and present me with the proper choice, my subconscious recalls my experiences with soda then I must use my conscious to pick one.
 
^ That conscious decision is an illusion or free will.

The "I think I'll have a.." part of thought is your brain giving you a sense of free will while the brain does it's thing. If we could rewind time to a moment before you "made the decision" and resume time.. you will always make the same decision.

If you could rewind time and play it again.. it will always play out the same. There is no reason that it wouldn't.. a particle wouldn't randomly change velocity for no reason.. since the beginning of time the universe is playing out like one giant line of dominoes.
 
rickolasnice said:
^ That conscious decision is an illusion or free will.

The "I think I'll have a.." part of thought is your brain giving you a sense of free will while the brain does it's thing. If we could rewind time to a moment before you "made the decision" and resume time.. you will always make the same decision.

If you could rewind time and play it again.. it will always play out the same. There is no reason that it wouldn't.. a particle wouldn't randomly change velocity for no reason.. since the beginning of time the universe is playing out like one giant line of dominoes.
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No, no it wouldn't, and there is a reason it wouldn't. The reason is that your conscious thought is real, it is massively complex and difficult to comprehend, but that does not mean it is not real. The conscious thought is part of the proccess that determines what chemicals are or are not released, where and when electrical impluleses are set off... If that was not true then it would be possible to consciously think, "I'll have a Mountain Dew" and have your arm ignore you and grab a Pepsi instead.

Care to provie some scientific evidence that supports your theory that conscious thought is an illusion?
 
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