Free will, determinism and absolute knowledge.

[Dan From Smithville]

Perfectly predictable? Absolutely not. Perfect predictability requires far, far, far more information than we'll ever have or be able to process.

That assumes a quantity of information and that quantity being inaccessible, though I would agree conditionally. We do not know how much information is required to predict human action or that even a large quantity is beyond eventual reach. Never-the-less, predictability is what you are claiming based on the idea that we do not have free will. I see this as a stumbling block for free will.

More accurately: Any action not determined would be the result of random chance, which, by definition, is not attributed to causation or necessity as I see it.

Understood.

Sometimes, yes it has. However, far more importantly, religious arguments for free will are often driven by the overarching need to hold onto the notion of freedom of choice so as to retain the virtue of sin and salvation.

I see that. Free will is assumed or needed in order to maintain the pretext of the religious views being held.

Indeed, that is the reasoning, and ofttimes the assertion.

I concur.

Sorry, but I fail to see why efforts to achieve high moral alignment would make predictability or unpredictability problematic. As I implied above, in a determinism world perfect predictability requires far, far, far more information than we'll ever have or be able to process.

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If a person exercising free will to avert temptation is so successful that they overcome all temptation, their life now becomes perfectly predictable. Can a perfectly predictable person truly be free?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

My father speaks frequently about nature and nurture, claiming that is all there is and there is no such thing as free will. I disagree. It it were true, then it would mean that we have no control over our thoughts or actions, thereby absolving us of any responsibility for them.

That is a key element driving the interest in determining if we have free will. Are we absolved from the responsibility of our actions if we could not choose to take any other actions?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

In a very real sense this is true; however, this is not how we've developed. From everyone I've talked with about the issue it appears we can't help but buy into the illusion of responsibility---a result of our deterministic personal universe---and act accordingly.

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So even though free will is an illusion and our actions are out of our control, we are accountable for our actions?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Free will is the fundamental principle of things in the universe, anything conscious has free will. Whatever ways humans or animals etc choose to use that free will in accordance to social structures and personal habits is besides the point. You can't not have free will, it is contrary to the most fundamental state of existence.

If we are constrained by social structure and habit is that really free will?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

As many others this is a rough question and honestly not sure either, so will at least give my current view or thoughts about it. To me the most logic approach to this question is to go to the very beginning of our lives, when we are infants as that is when our experience of the world is the most limited. As far as I know there are some controversy about these studies, so you should obviously be careful how you approach them. But for instance a study have been made that seem to suggest that babies tend to choose good behavior vs bad.

You can watch a quick video about it here:

If we assume that this is correct, the question obviously become whether we are born with a desire for good, which is outside our control as it could suggest a benefit in survival for our species. But that this in certain cases can end up being ruined later in life as we start to experience more things. So if we don't really have a choice between whether we prefer good behavior over bad, do we then have free will?

I am not sure myself, hence this thread. It is an interesting study and if it is identifying a trait, then it would have some serious implications on free will and supporting the idea of some determined necessity being expressed.

In another thread also about free will which you might have read, a guy on youtube suggest that we have no free will and that this is purely based on our "wants", and since we can't really control what we want we don't have free will. Now I think a good counter argument to this is that we can only know what we want through our own senses and since these are part of us, its arguable that we do have free will regardless of us being unable to control them directly or not. They feed us information about the world and can be seen as neutral agents which only goal is to help us survive in the world in which we live.

I believe that this or a similar video has been posted on this forum in another thread. It is an interesting argument. I think that it may surprise some that it is a direction that I have been leaning to for some time, but I am not yet so convinced to accept it fully without more questioning and further study.

Another example could be, if we imagine that you have never tasted or seen ice cream before and the only thing you have been told about it, is that you can eat it.

Now I place to identical bowls in front of you with identical ice cream in them, except the flavor, so lets say banana and coco. You can't smell or see any difference between them. So now I ask you to eat from one of them? If you have no free will, how will you decide which one to eat or not to eat any of them?

If this were presented in a series of selection tests and there were no pattern to which was chosen, it would suggest free will is operating. If there were anything driving selection that was beyond the scope of will, then it would suggest that choice was determined by other factors than free will.

Where I think our free will might be limited is when we start to get experience, so if we continue the example and say the person ate the banana ice cream and didn't like it and were told that it were banana, there is a good chance that they would not choose it next time. But this is not really based on free will, as the taste of banana makes them prefer other tastes. So their former experience decide how they want to choose in the future and therefore their wants. So is it free will or is it not free will? Because I think it depends on whether you think the lack of control over your senses limit your free will or whether it doesn't. And im not really sure, but I tend to lean towards us having free will, as the senses are after all part of our body. But again do we have free will as a baby in choosing good over bad behavior or does it even have anything to do with free will, if this is about surviving as a species.

So again not sure

That is one small aspect of the complication that rests in me in accepting determinism over free will. Is there a scope to free will. Can it operate on one level, but in a greater context, everything is determined. Like Newtonian physics operating on the macro level and breaking down on the quantum level. Is that dichotomy real or an illusion? I have a lot of questions myself.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Nope, atheism is simply the disbelief in god or gods, anything else is down to the individual.

And these free will topics crack me up, you have the free will to decide whether to post the OP or not. ;-)

I agree with the definition of atheism. I think it is the best definition based on the evidence. My question was actually to understand whether atheism has further implications that relate to free will.

Actually, that is one of the arguments for free will. But having made a choice, any claim that another option could be chosen has no value as supporting evidence, since it was not chosen. The claim of choosing an un-chosen option begs the question that has free will as the answer. Or at least that is the challenge to the argument that I have seen.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I don't know about that. That's actually really disputable if we picture this thread and everything leading up to it like these carrots:

View attachment 29510

I'm joking. But I do feel sometimes like determinism paints a pretty narrow picture compared to free will. Even though I'm skeptical even free will has every idea nailed down.

Thank you for using a rabbit in your post. It is the second visual aid including rabbits and I am wondering if this means something.

It think it is the implications of determinism that worry us more than determinism itself. If everything is determined, what difference does it make for me to exercise an illusion?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

No. Philosophy rejects determinism and describes free will quite well.

The philosophical arguments for free will is where I started years and years ago. I thought that I had a pretty good handle on it then, but over the years, new ideas have had an impact on that.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

Thank you for using a rabbit in your post. It is the second visual aid including rabbits and I am wondering if this means something.

It think it is the implications of determinism that worry us more than determinism itself. If everything is determined, what difference does it make for me to exercise an illusion?

Good question on determinism.

Regarding the rabbit reference, you have a rabbit as your avatar. And I just got accustomed to the members in the Jokes section using avatars like bears, then role-playing the avatar. So I didn't mean anything bad by it. I sometimes roleplay my avatar.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Go out your front door then decide which way to turn, left, right or go straight ahead. The choice is yours.

Or decide not to go out. Any decision is made using free will. It may of course have limited choices or logically you could narrow it down to one choice. But you use free will to arrive at the decision

Is that free will or volition? Do we really have a choice? That we could take another direction is not evidence that we could, since none of those other directions were taken.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Good question on determinism.

Regarding the rabbit reference, you have a rabbit as your avatar. And I just got accustomed to the members in the Jokes section using avatars like bears, then role-playing the avatar. So I didn't mean anything bad by it. I sometimes roleplay my avatar.

Don't read too much into my mention of rabbits. It was intended humorously and in line with what you just described about other members.

Maybe it is rabbits all the way down?

 

[Thief]

I have read arguments for and against free will. All I can say with any confidence is that I do not really know if we have it, but we appear to have it. Set me straight or show me its there.

you were using the word..... curious

that was the key and you stepped right over it

the garden event was a test
Man needs to be curious …...even if death is a pending consequence

would Man partake.....WILLFULLY seeking to know?

yes

 

[Dan From Smithville]

We have to define what we mean by free will. Do we mean the experience of having a desire and being able to act accordingly, in which case that desire might be the product of deterministic processes occurring outside of consciousness that then deliver that will to the self-aware self for awareness and execution, or do we mean that the source of the will is that self-aware self without an external material mechanism telling it what to will?

In the context of this thread and the discussion, I mean free will is arising from the self-aware self with no external influence.

If we mean the former, then we can call this the illusion of free will. I suspect that this is the case. As long as it feels like I'm the source of my will and I am free to exercise it, I would feel that I have free will despite being only an observer of deterministic processes being reported to consciousness.

The idea of free will being an illusion is becoming more of a problem for me. The metaphor of illusion may be part of that problem and perhaps a better metaphor is needed to better describe the condition. I like to feel I have free will too, but over time, I have begun to wonder. If there exists a condition that is free will, but limited in scope, is illusion the proper way to view that? Can it even be called free if it is constrained? Those may be questions that are further down the road than where we are at now in contemplating the existence of free will.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Here's where natural law can be recognized--and help--100% of all justice and jurisprudence is predicated upon free will exercise. In other words, we exonerate someone who kills another if, for example, they were so badly abused by the person they struck down, they are considered to have had no free will choice in the matter... "she abused and abused and abused me, and one day, I snapped, and snapped back". In contrast, we incarcerate murderers who use their free will.

Put into other words, it is commonly accepted/natural law that all whole, well persons exercise free will and free will is only lost when one is mentally infirm/abused/a child not yet fully formed.

Here's a summary from a paper I wrote on the subject in 2017:

Summary

Arguably, all of jurisprudence holds individuals and groups responsible for a myriad of free will choices. Persons and juridical persons with legal capacity are held responsible for choosing to enter into contracts and agreements,[1] criminals and tortfeasors are held responsible for choosing unethical and/or unlawful behaviors. Yet in some cases, a soft determinism aka the theory of compatibilism (free will and determinism are compatible ideas), has been invoked by the courts. Actions caused by an addiction or compulsion have been construed as exonerating the accused and even to shift the responsibility for lawless acts to another party, one who manipulated the accused as their puppet agent.

In justice systems modern and ancient, the single-most important justification for correction or punishment is that degree of guilt hinges upon free will choices to act unlawfully or as a tortfeasor. Millennia of philosophical debates add to recent discoveries in the fields of genetics and human behavior, however, questioning man’s assumptions regarding the power (and even the existence) of human free will.[2]


[1] Emerson, Robert. Business Law. Barron’s, 2015, page 129.

[2] Jones, Matthew. Overcoming the Myth of Free Will in Criminal Law: The True Impact of the Genetic Revolution. Duke Law Journal, Vol. 52:1031, 2003, "Overcoming the Myth of Free Will in Criminal Law: The True Impact of t" by Matthew Jones. Accessed 29 March 2017.

http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1187&context=dlj. Accessed 30 March 2017.

It is an obvious example of free will and how it becomes the basis of law, but this is action under the assumption of free will and not evidence or an argument for free will. Free will is assumed. Laws dealing with human actions on that basis are made, enforced and judgment is given based on that assumption.

I see that in the end of your summary, you have noted that new ideas, information and perspectives have opened up more arguments over the existence of free will. Any answers to these new arguments will have serious implications in our legal structure.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

you were using the word..... curious

that was the key and you stepped right over it

the garden event was a test
Man needs to be curious …...even if death is a pending consequence

would Man partake.....WILLFULLY seeking to know?

yes

But if curiosity is a part of our nature, then it is not the exercise of free will, but the meeting of a need that pre-exists. Is my curiosity a choice or is it something that exists that I must rush to appease?

I think a more important question is whether the existence of some traits that are determined mean that all traits are determined? Could curiosity be a determined condition, but we choose to address it and how?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Basically the idea that all of life is natural and arises from things that are natural without divine guidance. In essence, everything is determined by nature and yet choice actually exists.

I differ in my views on the former somewhat, but over all I am beginning to wonder if the latter is not the case. That free will rides on top of determinism and whether you view that as an illusion or sometime more substantial, that is the condition of things. The script sets the stage, but the actors bring the characters to life. So to speak.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Studies of brain physiology point to all brain functions, including decision making, as the product of the interaction of complex chains of cause+effect. As far as I'm aware, whether these can be interrupted by random quantum events is yet to be shown, but it doesn't seem impossible. Even if we decide by tossing a coin, we've decided to decide by tossing a coin.

Whether we decide directly or choose an indirect system, they are still choices. If consciousness arises as an emergent property of brain form and function with an admixture of quantum events, does this mean that our behavior is determined? That seems to be the implication or am I wrong?

And if we don't make decisions in that fashion, by what process do we make decisions? Even God would have to do it that way.

I take it from your statement here that alternatives mechanism have not been found.

But when we decide in that fashion, it's our brain, the same one that generates our sense of self, that does the work; and we generally have a strong and integrated feeling that the decision is ours, one we made, one we own. Or pwn, if you prefer.

That is what it feels like to me, but is that feeling of something real or is it a false sense? That is the basis for seeking to find out and for the arguments that have arisen. Where I once felt sure that it was free will, I find I am now uncertain.

Yes, you're right ─ no there isn't. Outside of this sentence there are no absolutes.

The way I see it, we can only come up with approximations and seek to make ever better approximations with increasing accumulation of data and new ideas and perspectives. Where I once felt my approximation was good, new ideas and data are driving me back to the drawing board.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Freewill and predestination is an ancient argument among the 3 Jewish sects. The Essenes (similar to Calvinists) believe in absolute predestination but no freewill. The Sadducees believe in absolute freewill but no predestination. While the Pharisees stand in between.

The Christianity concept is delivered from Paul who is a Pharisee. Paul either introduced a Pharisaic concept, or it's about something else as a new revelation. Whatever it is doesn't affect Christianity's main message which is tied to human salvation.

That predestination is for God to lay a path for a human to go through such that a variety of choices are available for a human to choose from thus to show who himself is under open witnessing (say by the angels). It's necessary step to facilitate the final judgment for humans. To put it another way, God doesn't need to specially do anything for the unsaved as it's much easier for them to be proved to be the dead during the final judgment. However God may have to do a lot for those to be saved such that they can be proved to be the saved in the final judgment.

Interesting. I think the most important point here is the concept of free will riding in a determined universe. It is one that appeals to me and a compromise between the two camps. But I want a compromise because there are real reasons to accept it and not to appease misgivings from the other two positions. At least for me personally.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Using the assumption of materialism/physicalism, there can be no such thing as free will. But because of the randomness introduced by quantum mechanics, I don't think you can say determinism is strictly true either.

In order to have free will, you have to have a spiritual aspect to reality, something living that can decide, a soul. This is, I think, where the answer to these questions are to be found.

Isn't the conscious mind something living that can decide? That seems to be the nexus of the question. Does the conscious mind exercise free will? It is of material origin, though seemingly immaterial.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

This is a philosophical question. Ultimately, science depends on philosophy, specifically ontology, epistemology, and metaphysics. The scientific method is a philosophical construct; it is not made of matter and energy, nor is there a quantum field called "scientific method".

I agree that science is based on philosophy, but goes beyond that. The scientific method also has that basis, but is not a philosophy itself.

My statement regarded my view of science and how there is no absolute knowledge of anything. That scientific conclusions are always contingent due to that fact.