Are people scared of free will?

[L2R]

in new zealand, determinism is choice, bro.

 

[Jabberwocky]

i've been thinking about the apparent assumption by the OP that determinism entails lack of free will. firstly, there is a philosophical view called compatibilism that claims this need not be the case, i don't know how popular it is though.

secondly, for v technical reasons, i don't think indeterminism of physical processes (if there is such indeterminism, which we don't know) is sufficient for free will. i have no idea what is required, but just because something isn't predetermined doesn't entail that we can control it. i have many reasons for not believing in free will, a pertinent one being that to me it appears to require some sort of soul, and if that is non-physical then physics doesn't appear to be relevant to the debate. thats by no means the soundest reason, but the one most relevant to this post.

 

[L2R]

^it's pretty sound to me, mate. you're right on that second point. A lack of determinism certainly does not essentially mean free will. Also your concern about free will points right to the problem of it, how said will causes a physical body to react to it. there's a fundamental gap in knowledge right there.

as for the compatibilism, that's a bit tricky. do we say movie characters have free will?

 

[thesoundofmotion]

I do realize that it's not as simple as just there being free will or determinism. I mean these statements can be pretty vague at times. It's hard to get a real definitive answer to what these concepts really are.

I do suppose the world could not be determined and we have no free will either. So we are just bodies performing functions and nothing is determined. This could very well be the case.

But to say that things are already determined and that we have free will as well seems a bit odd because to me free will would imply that we are in the driver's seat. If life was truly determined I don't see how we could be in the driver's seat and being in the driver's seat implies free will to me.

 

[psood0nym]

From having spent time in cultures where fatalism is something of a national mindset, I can say that there is definitely a certain ease involved with taking a fatalistic or deterministic outlook to your life.

Yes, I believe I've read that fatalism has spiked during times of great historic mortal volatility (e.g. those living in Dresden during bombings in WWII). It has value as a psychological defense mechanism if you don't think about it too much. Certainly the concept of free will does inspire fear, as what would be the meaning of fear without it? I'm not certain I, as a subject, understand the meaning of truth or falsity, or the entire enterprise of reason at all, without free will. Without free will all is merely the output of a deterministic or indeterministic flux, including our understandings of and statements of reasons in affirmation or negation of free will (perspective, experience, all), and their truth or falsity. If there is no free will there can be no argument for or against the concept of free will that has any meaning, as such argument would merely be the output of an impersonal flux of energy, deterministic or indeterministic, it does not matter.

The free will theory is the only practical theory to live with that I know of. If one does not subscribe to it then by their own admission debate with them is out of their control, and thereby lacking initiative. There can be varying degrees of free will, but free will must exist in some way for meaning to exist in any personally impactful way I can conceive (and within this range much of philosophy is born).

I've never understood how arguments for compatibilism succeed.

I'm on MXE, but I don't think the above differs from my sober beliefs, heh.

 

[CrackAndScrabble]

Well you can kinda put all the stances there on a spectrum. Libertarianism (Free Will) ---Compatibilism---Determinism. In current academia you'll find alot of philosophers and psychologist hold a Compatibilistic like view. But alot of Neuroscientist are starting to hold a strict Deterministic and backing it up with studies of the physics of neural transmission. Its kinda getting to be a really interesting debate with all the studies being done in neuroscience.

The idea of having free will is often very frightening. haha its called an Exsistential Crisis.

BUT the idea of not having free will is even more frightening than having free will. Holding a Deterministic stance doesn't mean your free from the consequences of the social/psychical/materialistic systems in place. You'll see in alot of Eastern philosophical traditions that try and transcendent those systems, like Vedanta Hinduism and Buddhism. These philosophy's hold a inherent deterministic position, even though they try and prescribe various was of getting in touch with your consciousness. Just because you value your consciousness doesn't mean you have to believe in free will.

 

[L2R]

I do realize that it's not as simple as just there being free will or determinism. I mean these statements can be pretty vague at times. It's hard to get a real definitive answer to what these concepts really are.

There's a lot of material on ths subject, makes for great reading.

I do suppose the world could not be determined and we have no free will either. So we are just bodies performing functions and nothing is determined. This could very well be the case.

What you describe is still determinism. When things are neither will nor determined, there would be some chaotic or random mechanism at play. Something which would mean unpredictable, or two (or more) different outcomes to the same condition.

But to say that things are already determined and that we have free will as well seems a bit odd because to me free will would imply that we are in the driver's seat. If life was truly determined I don't see how we could be in the driver's seat and being in the driver's seat implies free will to me.

Think of this as a matter of scale. By the scale of an individual, we have free will. Yet by cosmological scales, our free will is so insignificant as to be non-existent. Same at the atomic scale. Then since the material world is causal in nature, so is our sense of will.

 

[Jabberwocky]

^it's pretty sound to me, mate. you're right on that second point. A lack of determinism certainly does not essentially mean free will. Also your concern about free will points right to the problem of it, how said will causes a physical body to react to it. there's a fundamental gap in knowledge right there.

as for the compatibilism, that's a bit tricky. do we say movie characters have free will?

thank you- i felt it was unsound because i can't really jusitfy saying free will needs something like a soul, its based on my gut. but yes regardless of whether it needs a soul, we need to explain how our wills could be physically causal.

the arsehole in me would say that as movie characters are fictional, they logically both do and don't have freewill (as once you've got a falsehood anything follows). saying anything more seems full of pitfalls, as you say, it is tricky. i feel like it would depend on whether the writers have free will, if so it will be up to them, and if not, they can't.

Its kinda getting to be a really interesting debate with all the studies being done in neuroscience.

absolutely, we live in very exciting times!!

There's a lot of material on ths subject, makes for great reading.

...
Think of this as a matter of scale. By the scale of an individual, we have free will. Yet by cosmological scales, our free will is so insignificant as to be non-existent. Same at the atomic scale. Then since the material world is causal in nature, so is our sense of will.

indeed- sounofmotion there is a good introduction here , the stanford encyclopedia is generally great for overviews and its all written by experts. roughly i think if compatabilism/any position were totally untenable, it wouldn't be discussed there... though that said i do find compatibilism very difficult to comprehend.

l2r its interesting you mention atoms- i agree our free will is insignificant to atoms and thats actually part of how i came to think indeterminism alone isn't sufficient. due to this theorem which states that if certain measurements we choose to make aren't determined, then neither are the outcomes of those measurements. it doesn't depend on any interpretations and 'free will theorem' is, i think a misnomer made to generate citations, should have been the 'indeterministic decisions theorem'

also just to throw a spanner in- what if we manage to conquer interstellar flight, for all we know we could one day learn to use stars as fuel and gobble them up. or less sci-fiy, what if the theories suggesting the LHC could tear a hole in space-time expanding at the speed of light had been true? our wills aren't necessarily insignificant on any scales. (i know this isn't really relevant, but i do think its cool to think about. us being able to effect things on a cosmological scale, not us destroying everything)

 

[L2R]

as a species, we make a hell of an impact on the environment. do we, as a species hold a "collective will"?

in order to have some chance at knowing IF we have free will, we need to know WHAT it actually means. it's not just decision making, which can be causal. like when you're facing options, you use what mental faculties you have (memory, critical analysis) to determine a preference. generally some options work out to be more appealing than others, so they are quickly selected. other times when options are equal, it's harder to decide, but ultimately with equal options, it doesn't matter. it could be a coin toss and the outcome would be valid either way. is that free will?

or is free will the ability to select the poorer of two option in spite of its inferiority? that irrationality is a bit counter-intuitive to be calling it free will.

what about tastes and other predispositions, are they free will? such things are hugely influential, and one can acquire and change tastes over time, but does that make them freely chosen?

earlier i mentioned intentionality. there is a difference between a factual and an intentional thought. when you look into the differences between statements like "i am shorter than bill" and "i like bill", things become really interesting.

 

[atara]

free will vs. determinism argument

I feel that the whole argument is illegitimate. There is not a dichotomy; the concepts are orthogonal. If I had a truly random number generator, and I used it to make decisions, does it make me free? If I put it in my brain, wire it to a synapse, is it more free? If it is pre-existing and part of the mind, does that make a difference? It is still random. Surely a response must either depend on external conditions or not; in the first case it is a result and in the latter it is random.

Is the term free will even meaningful at all? The meaning of the statement that it is free: that something is dependent on a prior condition or not dependent on a prior condition are both insufficient. Suppose that I have a soul pulling the strings of my mind: are the actions of the soul a result of external conditions in this world, of some other world, or of no priors at all? It is still determined or not.

There are two times when the concept is relevant. The use of the same term in both cases is an abuse of the language. In the first, an action is said to be "of a person's own free will". When we say this we mean that the person understands and accepts the consequences of the action on an intellectual level. This definition has relevance to questions of addiction, coercion, and emotive action; the distinction between first and second degree murder lies herein. In it we see free will as a continuum: some actions are more free than others. This has little to do with metaphysics and is mostly concerned with the day-in, day-out way in which a person might live their life, and it is a useful and relevant metaphor for the way in which one might consider their choices and the impacts thereof. It is mostly interesting in the first-person.

The second use connects the idea of free will with the question of whether life can have any value at all, for what is the purpose of the operation of an automaton? This is a more complex and interesting philosophical question by virtue of it's being mostly people tying their tongues in knots with fancy words.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.

~more Wittgenstein, more Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

 

[B9]

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.
Hence also there can be no ethical propositions. Propositions cannot express anything higher.

It could be argued that whilst in the world one can free themselves from the 5 "material" senses & transcend this valuelessness.

 

[L2R]

I forgot who said it, but i recall at least one philosopher of the mind to suggest that we are simply incapable of understanding our own minds enough to answer this question definitively. Just as a horse is inherently incapable of understanding quantum mechanics, so do we have limits on what we can fathom.

edit: i think it was mcginn

edit2: i recalled correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McGinn

edit3: lol, one of his recent books is called "mindfucking" http://www.amazon.com/Mindfucking-Critique-Manipulation-Colin-McGinn/dp/1844651142