Does Free Will Exist?

syo said:

that sth is our opinion. we form freely our opinion.

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So why don't an equal amount of people freely form the opinion that a turd is just as good to eat as an apple is?

charlie sc said:

Are you immune to the influences of others or your own unconscious desires that you may not realise?

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No im not immune to the influences of others, im greatly affected by those influences, but my will is my will through it all, certain things are not subject to change. I may change on the outside to meet requirements, serve interests, adapt to the matters at hand. But my will accomodates all influences i have.

I dont see any conflicting unconscious desires arising in me.

I do have general foundational will. And specific situational will that i have is subject to change but my foundational will is noneso conflicted by these changes.

I will never get the urge to rob a bank, or drink alcohol, or take drugs. I am open to spontaneous events where i am in a place that is positive.

A desire i am not aware of never gets realized. I am not so sure that unconscious desires are real.

I know that there is unconscious mind and i know that its a repository of experiences, ideas, thoughts, memories.

Trailblazer said:

Nobody has absolute free will.
Nobody can do “anything” they want to do. Free will is constrained by many factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances. How free we are varies with every given situation we find ourselves in. However, we have the ability to make choices within parameters. Otherwise, we would just be at the mercy of our past experiences and our heredity. If humans did not have free will how could we be responsible for our actions and held accountable in a court of law?

It is not as easy as doing what God wants you to do because we cannot know exactly what God wants us to do. It is a mind state, a willingness to allow God to help rather than trying to control everything yourself. Then help just comes.

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Is free will the same as free choice?

Koldo said:

If you tell me you are acting out of a certain principle you are not telling me why you are acting out of that principle.

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prin·ci·ple
/ˈprinsəpəl/
noun
plural noun: principles

1. 1.
   a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

Your asking me why I breath air basically.


Why am I acting on that principle? Because it's one of my principles! It's not that hard to understand.

Koldo said:

I don't disagree this process is possible. I just disagree it is possible without some former desire.

If you agree that you make choices based on what you want to do and that you can influence your choices by choosing on what you focus that means that if you want to focus on something you can choose to focus on that thing and then influence your decision making process further down the line. But notice that when you choose on what to focus you are already making a choice based on what you want. Do you see the issue ?

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Skwim said:

Sorry, but your awareness explains nothing.


Okay, then just how does this "enabling" work? What propels your thinking to one direction rather than the other?


FYI, anytime you introduce randomness into the equation you deprive the will of all freedom.

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The entire argument in the video was based on the notion that we cannot decide what our wants are. However, if what we think can and does effect what our wants are and if we do have at least some control over our thoughts as well as an awareness we can control our thoughts to some degree then that suggests that we CAN have at least some effect on what our wants are.

Okay, then just how does this "enabling" work? What propels your thinking to one direction rather than the other?

Your awareness that what you think can and does effect what you ultimately want. Once you are aware that you have BOTH short term and long term wants you can then evaluate which of those wants is more or less important to you. You can recognize that in the short term you'll almost always going to want to be lazy and that in the long term you're almost always going to want to go and work out. You can then determine if your short term wants or your long term wants are most likely to add benefit to your life and then begin training yourself to produce conscious thoughts that bolster whichever want you've determined in in your best interest.

FYI, anytime you introduce randomness into the equation you deprive the will of all freedom.

That's pretty much what my point was. Yes, if you remain unaware of your thoughts and how they can effect your wants then it is pretty much like you are reacting to your random thoughts and no free will is in affect. However, once you introduce some awareness of your thoughts and how they can affect your wants you can make an effort to have specific thoughts, not just random thoughts, that will affect what you think and also what you want.

Nimos said:

So why don't an equal amount of people freely form the opinion that a turd is just as good to eat as an apple is?

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I checked the dictionary. turd means excrement??? WHAT??? all this time it was apple vs excrement???

QuestioningMind said:

However, if what we think can and does effect what our wants are and if we do have at least some control over our thoughts as well as an awareness we can control our thoughts to some degree then that suggests that we CAN have at least some effect on what our wants are.

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So, exactly how are you controlling your thoughts and awareness without wanting to, which, in turn, requires some kind of causation. Thing is, whatever you do, which includes your thoughts, is either a random event, or an event that is caused. You just can't get away from the two options.

Okay, then just how does this "enabling" work? What propels your thinking to one direction rather than the other?

Your awareness that what you think can and does effect what you ultimately want. Once you are aware that you have BOTH short term and long term wants you can then evaluate which of those wants is more or less important to you. You can recognize that in the short term you'll almost always going to want to be lazy and that in the long term you're almost always going to want to go and work out. You can then determine if your short term wants or your long term wants are most likely to add benefit to your life and then begin training yourself to produce conscious thoughts that bolster whichever want you've determined in in your best interest.

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Unfortunately, all of this operation cannot operate without causation. Your awareness, recognition, and wants only come into being because they're determined by antecedent events. Events that are part of the chain of cause-effect that culminate in the moment of awareness, recognition, and wants.

FYI, anytime you introduce randomness into the equation you deprive the will of all freedom.

That's pretty much what my point was. Yes, if you remain unaware of your thoughts and how they can effect your wants then it is pretty much like you are reacting to your random thoughts and no free will is in affect. However, once you introduce some awareness of your thoughts and how they can affect your wants you can make an effort to have specific thoughts, not just random thoughts, that will affect what you think and also what you want.

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And what makes you have specific thought A rather than specific thought B? There has to be some kind of selector, and how this selector works is determined by the culmination of the a chain of cause-effect events immediately preceding the determination. It determined A rather than B because . . . . . And the "cause" in "because" is quite telling. It's informing you that there's a necessarily specific antecedent operant at work that can only lead to A and never B. And the "why A and not B?" can only be answered by going a step back along the the chain of cause-effect events leading up to the determination.

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Trailblazer said:

This 15 minute video, Why Free Will Doesn’t Exist, was posted to me by an atheist I have been posting to on another forum. I do not agree with him that we do not have free will. Below is the gist of his argument. The first two paragraphs below are a summary of what is in the video and the last paragraph is this atheist’s personal opinion.

What makes free will an illusion is that the choice you make will always be either the choice to do what you most want to do (even when it overrides your wanting to do something else) or the choice you don't want to make but are forced to make.

We like to think that we have free will, that we could make choices other than the ones we make. However, free will -- the ability to have acted differently -- is an illusion. No matter what choice you ever made, you never really had the ability to have chosen differently.

Since free will is an illusion, it's also nothing but a lame excuse for certain problems that theists run into, for example, why a good god would allow evil to exist.​

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My question is, did you post this thread by your choice or did someone coach or tell you to post this thread ?

So if you post this thread by your own choice, then it was by your own free will that you posted this thread.

So it was by your free will that you posted this thread.

syo said:

I checked the dictionary. turd means excrement??? WHAT??? all this time it was apple vs excrement???

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Yes that is true. So the desire of each of them are not equal when it comes to you choosing between them, and that "want" or desire is not something you have chosen based on your free will. If that makes sense? Something about the apple makes you want to eat it more than the turd, so its not really about you freely choosing whether you want to or not, but that your "wants" makes you choose the apple. Which is why the way you choose something is in reverse order of what you would expect. Your "wants" comes before your choice when you decide something. Which is what the guy in the video means with you not really having free will.

No free will means:

As if every action was caused by outward control, or the unconscious self kept making you do things.

Or that desire is the grand dictator and you have no possible way to stop it or end it. So you must follow through with it.

Or that the desires are not all you, and you didnt agree to the desire. The desire overtook you and you had no say in the matter.

So in a way, what you become is nothing to do with you. Iow , you are who you are because you cannot help to be anything otherwise. And so once i become something truly good, or truly bad my freedom, or slavery lies within those parameters.

My becoming is totally outside of my choice. I become something temporally, or eternally because i cannot help but love what i love, desire what i desire.

Enoch07 said:

prin·ci·ple
/ˈprinsəpəl/
noun
plural noun: principles

1. 1.
   a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

Your asking me why I breath air basically.


Why am I acting on that principle? Because it's one of my principles! It's not that hard to understand.

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You could be acting out based on some other of your principles. Even one that contradicts the one you are using currently in your path. Why this one and not some other ? Actually, are you telling me you can't choose to have some other principle which means you are a slave to act according to this principle ? If you are not telling me that, the why didn't you choose some other principle ?

The Reverend Bob said:

By matter I meant physical substance.

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So did I.

Is free will the same as free choice?

Ancient Soul said:

Not so fast!

If you/someone REALLY wanted to be a doctor they could do whatever it took to earn/save up enough money and get a doctors degree. Many, many, people muster up and follow their dreams. Many now famous actors tell of working at low paying jobs, eating out of dumpsters, living in their cars, etc, doing whatever it took to hold on until they FINALLY passed an audition and got their start. Others work two or three jobs to earn/save enough to get into a college and get various degrees. And intelligence has nothing to do with getting a degree, all one has to is memorize things long enough to pass tests.

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Yes, all those actions, freely taken, add up to becoming a Doctor. But "want" isn't sufficient to get one there.

Enoch07 said:

No

You can't chose to magically not be angry.

You can't chose to not be gay, or straight.

You can't chose to shoot laser beams out of your eyes either.

Free will is about the ability to chose from what you can change. Not being ability to change whatever you want.

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Right. You cannot choose the impossible.

Skwim said:

So, exactly how are you controlling your thoughts and awareness without wanting to, which, in turn, requires some kind of causation. Thing is, whatever you do, which includes your thoughts, is either a random event, or an event that is caused.

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It's either an event that was caused by you, or an event that was caused by forces exterior to 'you.'

Don't confuse the issue with randomness.

Koldo said:

You could be acting out based on some other of your principles.

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Or not.

Koldo said:

It is just that we are contradictory beings in the sense that we can hold contradictory desires within ourselves.

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Yet we have to choose.

samtonga43 said:

Is free will the same as free choice?

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It is essentially the same thing.
It is the freedom to choose between two or more possible actions.

Faithofchristian said:

My question is, did you post this thread by your choice or did someone coach or tell you to post this thread ?

So if you post this thread by your own choice, then it was by your own free will that you posted this thread.

So it was by your free will that you posted this thread.

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Yes, I posted it by choice. It was nobody else's idea. I was riding my bike to work and the thought just came to me to post it, so I think that thought could have come from God, although I could never prove that.