Do you really have a choice?

muhammad_isa said:

That's not an appropriate example.
Would a person CHOOSE to be crucified?

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Irrelevant what any person would do. I'm talking about specific persons.
Although saints and martyrs chose to be crucified or tormented and die.

Trailblazer said:

I believe that God knows everything that will ever happen to everyone throughout their lives and all that is written on the Tablet of Fate.

Here is what I believe about free will:
I do not believe that humans are just a function of electrical impulses in our brains. I believe we are sentient beings who have a will, and we make choices based upon our desires and preferences, which come from a combination of factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances - everything that goes into making us the person we are. All of these factors are the reasons why we choose one thing or another at any point in time.

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Contradictory statements. So, where is free-will?

muhammad_isa said:

Would a person CHOOSE to be crucified?

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Jesus did not choose to be crucified. According to Bible, God decided so, and did not help Jesus when he asked for help.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? 27:46 (Mathew) 15:34 (Mark)
I thirst. 19:28 (John)
It is finished. 19:30 (John)
Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit. 23:46 (Luke)

Ajax said:

If you answer yes (she could choose another color next week) you risk being regarded as silly, because what you have seen/witnessed when you were in the future, can not change.

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The only thing that appears as silly, to me, is the hypothetical scenario.
'Doctor Who' is fiction, you know that, right?

It's all about implied meaning of wording..
In this case, you imply that 'cannot change' means that Jane is not choosing of her own-free-will,
which is fallacious. She might be, or she might not .. depending on if she is being coerced.

Knowledge of the future is not coercion, yet it seems your 'instinct' tells you that it is.

To sum up:
It is about the REASON why it 'cannot change' i.e. it 'cannot change' (or will not change) because
Jane doesn't choose any other color. Not because she can't if she had wanted to.

muhammad_isa said:

The only thing that appears as silly, to me, is the hypothetical scenario.
'Doctor Who' is fiction, you know that, right?

It's all about implied meaning of wording..
In this case, you imply that 'cannot change' means that Jane is not choosing of her own-free-will,
which is fallacious. She might be, or she might not .. depending on if she is being coerced.

Knowledge of the future is not coercion, yet it seems your 'instinct' tells you that it is.

To sum up:
It is about the REASON why it 'cannot change' i.e. it 'cannot change' (or will not change) because
Jane doesn't choose any other color. Not because she can't if she had wanted to.

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Back to square one... I do not imply anything...
I asked you a simple question.
In the "silly" hypothetical scenario..."Is there the slightest possibility that Jane, despite the many choices she has, will not buy the same floral dress at exactly the same time next week?"
Yes, or no?
Your last chance...

Aupmanyav said:

Contradictory statements. So, where is free-will?

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Humans have free will so we can make choices, but those choices are circumscribed by ability and opportunity, so we cannot choose anything we might like to choose. What we choose is determined by many factors such as childhood upbringing, heredity, education, adult experiences, and present life circumstances so our free will is somewhat deterministic.

muhammad_isa said:

Knowledge of the future is not coercion, yet it seems your 'instinct' tells you that it is

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By the way I never said that it was coercion that made her buy this dress, but if there is a being that knows and sees everything (definiton of omniscience) even before Jane decides what she will buy, then she has no other option whatsoever, because in the "eyes" and in the knowledge of God, she has already bought it.
No returns accepted.

Ajax said:

This is completely irrelevant. Eclipse is not an act of free will.

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But the principle is the same. The fact that an astronomer knows when and where the eclipse will occur is not what causes the eclipse to occur.
A solar eclipse occurs because the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, casting the Moon's shadow on Earth. It does not occur because the astronomer knows it will occur.

Ajax said:

More appropriate example are:
If God knew and had made a plan for Jesus to be crucified, could Jesus do otherwise? The answer is NO.
If God knew that he will give the 10 commandments to Moses, could Moses refuse to take them? NO.
Could Mary refuse to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit? NO
Could Judas refuse to betray Jesus? NO
The list of more examples like the above can go on...

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If any of the things you noted above were fated (predestined) by God, then your are correct, the answer would be NO.

If God predestined for Jesus to be crucified then it was not a choice that Jesus made so it could not have been otherwise.
If God predestined that he would give the 10 commandments to Moses and Moses would take them, then Moses could not refuse to take them

However, not everything that happens to us in life is predestined. Some of what happens is chosen via free will.

See the first paragraph below. God knows everything that will ever happen to us in our lives, whether it was predestined by Him or whether it was chosen by us, and all that is written in the Book of Life. However, my point all along has been that God's foreknowledge of what will happen to us is not the cause of what will happen. What causes events in our lives is either God's predestination or human free will choices and the ensuing actions.

“O thou who art the fruit of My Tree and the leaf thereof! On thee be My glory and My mercy. 133 Let not thine heart grieve over what hath befallen thee. Wert thou to scan the pages of the Book of Life, thou wouldst, most certainly, discover that which would dissipate thy sorrows and dissolve thine anguish.

Know thou, O fruit of My Tree, that the decrees of the Sovereign Ordainer, as related to fate and predestination, are of two kinds. Both are to be obeyed and accepted. The one is irrevocable, the other is, as termed by men, impending. To the former all must unreservedly submit, inasmuch as it is fixed and settled. God, however, is able to alter or repeal it. As the harm that must result from such a change will be greater than if the decree had remained unaltered, all, therefore, should willingly acquiesce in what God hath willed and confidently abide by the same.

The decree that is impending, however, is such that prayer and entreaty can succeed in averting it.

God grant that thou who art the fruit of My Tree, and they that are associated with thee, may be shielded from its evil consequences.”

Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 132-133

Ajax said:

By the way I never said that it was coercion that made her buy this dress, but if there is a being that knows and sees everything (definiton of omniscience) even before Jane decides what she will buy, then she has no other option whatsoever, because in the "eyes" and in the knowledge of God, she has already bought it.
No returns accepted.

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What is flying over your head is that it is not God's knowledge that causes her to buy the dress, it is her choice to buy the dress that is the cause.
If she chose to buy the dress, God would have known that was the choice she would make because God is all-knowing, but if she had chosen not to buy the dress, that is what would have been known by God.

God knows what choices we will make because God is all-knowing, but it is not God's knowledge that causes our actions. It is our choices.

muhammad_isa said:

To sum up:
It is about the REASON why it 'cannot change' i.e. it 'cannot change' (or will not change) because
Jane doesn't choose any other color. Not because she can't if she had wanted to.

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Well said.

Ajax said:

In the "silly" hypothetical scenario..."Is there the slightest possibility that Jane, despite the many choices she has, will not buy the same floral dress at exactly the same time next week?"
Yes, or no?

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Of course not, no .. and you have said "If you answer no, you would confirm my point.
Your point presumably being that Jane had no choice .. no other options, because she MUST choose it.

..but that is false, Jane DOES have a choice, and the only reason that she MUST choose it, is
because G-d is omniscient .. so it is a fallacy to imply any other reason .. such as no free-will bla bla.

The future will be what it will be .. the illusion is not that of 'free-will', but the perception of the future
as being of different nature to the past. We perceive 'time' as a moving 'now', and that creates the illusion.

Ajax said:

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I have seen this video before. What a blundering idiot she is.
Anyone can make a video and call it science.
Denying that humans have free will to choose between right and wrong is just an excuse, a way to abdicate responsibility for one's actions.

Judge, judge, I had to kill my wife because I had no choice since I had no free will to choose!

The entire justice system all over the world is predicated on free will. So they are all wrong and this idiot of a woman is right?

Free WIll, Determinism, and the Criminal Justice System

Everyone wants to hold criminals responsible for their actions. This “responsibility” has its foundation in the belief that we all have the free will to choose right from wrong. What if free will is just an illusion, how would that impact the criminal justice system? Free will creates the moral structure that provides the foundation for our criminal justice system. Without it, most punishments in place today must be eliminated completely. Its no secret that I’m a firm believer in free will, but I’m also a firm believer in arguing against it when it helps my clients. That’s what we lawyers do (call me a hypocrite if you like, I can take it). Now, let’s delve into the issues and practical effects of eliminating free will.

We only punish those who are morally responsible for their action. If a driver accidentally runs over a pedestrian–there will be no criminal charges in the death of the pedestrian. This is what we call an “accident”. However, if a husband runs over his wife after an argument, that same pedestrian death now constitutes murder. It was the driver’s “intent” that made one pedestrian death a crime, and the other not. But, what if we examine the husband’s brain, and an MRI discovers a frontal lobe defect that could explain his deviant behavior? Is he still guilty of murder? If such a defect “caused” the husband’s actions, our criminal justice system has laws in place that would label the husband “Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity”. That being said, what happens if “causation” runs deeper than a mere frontal lobe problem?

Neuroscientists get excited when their brain scans detect an abnormality, but today we’re going to look beyond this modern day phrenology. Some scientists now claim that human behavior may not, in fact, have its origins in the brain. Yes, there’s a battle brewing between physics and biologists. On the one side, we have the white coats feeling lumps on our skulls, or seeing brain electrical activity on a computer screen; all of which is fairly impressive. But the physicists are telling us that causation predates the brain. Basically, everything (including brain activity) is the result of the collision of molecules that behave according to the laws of physics (we call this determinism). If every event is determined by a previous event, there is no room for squishy concepts of “free will” and “morality”. Free will, then, amounts to one of many illusions inflicted upon us by our tricky brains. As a criminal defense attorney, I am anxious to see whether or not folks who believe we have no free will are willing to dismiss all charges against my clients who may have (God forbid) raped their wife or killed their dog (sometimes pets evoke more emotion than spouses, I’m just saying).

To understand how determinism eliminates free will, and sets my prisoners free, let’s take a look at Professor Patrick Grim’s explanation:

“ 1. Everything in the universe happens because of earlier events in accordance with causal law.

1. My choices and decisions are events in the universe.
2. They therefore happen as they do because of earlier events—events even before my birth—in accordance with causal law.
3. I therefore have no free choice. I cannot act freely and cannot be held ethically responsible for my actions.” — Patrick Grim, Philosophy of Mind (The Great Courses) [Grim also explains that quantum mechanics allows for a certain randomness that defeats the causation in #1, but this quantum randomness still doesn’t prove free will exists]

Now, if a person truly subscribes to the notion that free will is an illusion, Florida’s criminal laws are equipped to handle such–but–the end result in all cases is that the charges would be dismissed. In other words, determinism doesn’t demand a change to criminal laws, we’ll just have lots of dropped cases and empty prisons. We currently dismiss cases when a doctor can show the court that a defendant’s mental state gave him no choice but to commit the charged offense (Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure (Rule 3.211-3.216)). The issue of “choice” and free will even plays a role in non-criminal proceedings, like the Florida law known as the Jimmy Ryce Act. This act requires convicted sexual predators to be involuntarily committed (imprisoned) to a hospital immediately following their prison term–for an indefinite period of time–should the person be deemed likely to commit further acts of violence without treatment. Several years ago, I had a client go to prison for three years on a sex offense (it’s rare that my clients go to prison, I’m just saying…bragging too). As he was waiting at the prison front door for his mother to pick him up—the Jimmy Ryce folks took him involuntarily for another four years to their locked down “hospital” that is, for all intents and purposes, another prison. Again, the person has already completed his sentence for a violent sex offense, yet is still incarcerated in a mental facility to prevent further criminal acts (if it sounds a bit like Minority Report, it is, but replace the “pre-cogs” with psychiatrists). The issue of free will and involuntary commitment was addressed in a case out of Washington, In re Detention of Campbell, 139 Wn.2d 341, 986 P.2d 771 (Wash. 1999), where dissenting Justice Sanders reasoned as follows:

In the dark heart of the sex predator statute is the legislative denial of free will and individual responsibility. This is true because a ‘sexually violent predator’ is legislatively defined as one ‘who suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder which makes the person likely to engage in predatory acts of sexual violence….’ RCW 71.09.020(1). Necessarily one who simply commits a violent sexual act through volitional choice is outside the statute. Such an individual is what the criminal law is made for. But in theory the person who does this because his “mental abnormality” or “personality disorder” “makes” him do it is not a person acting by his free will and, consequently, not one who can be held accountable for his choices.

Therefore evidence is necessary to distinguish between those who volitionally act of their free will and those who don’t. On its face future acts of violence based on free choice are not only outside the statute but would seem unpredictable in principle. On the other hand one would expect those acting out their nonvolitional destiny by reason of a ‘mental abnormality’ or ‘personality disorder’ which causes violent sexual conduct would show themselves through the application of diagnostic criteria proved in the scientific arena to be reliable and accurate through repetition and replication.” [emphasis added]

As you can see from the appellate opinion above, our criminal laws are founded on the notion that if a person is not acting by his free will, the law cannot hold him “accountable for his choices”. There are plenty of other examples of Florida criminal laws that would benefit my clients, should everyone agree that free will is an illusion. For example, confessions cannot not be entered into evidence unless they are made of the defendant’s “own free will”. The term “free will” is contained right there in the definition of numerous legal concepts. Other criminal law concepts would lose their meaning as well, like “premeditation”. Is it realistic to speak of premeditation if freewill doesn’t exist? Is a robot on an assembly line in China premeditating the building of an iPhone? The mere fact that a robot takes several distinct steps to complete a task doesn’t render its actions ‘premeditated’. Such concepts should be purged from our criminal justice system if we’re all just biological robots.

In spite of my skepticism, I must confess that I enjoy using deterministic arguments to help my clients. We criminal defense attorneys have been making deterministic arguments for centuries. Here’s a classic from Clarence Darrow, as he argued that the jury not put his client Loeb and Leopold to death:

“Is Dicky Loeb to blame because … of the infinite forces that conspired to form him, the infinite forces that were at work producing him ages before he was born … Science has been at work, humanity has been at work, scholarship has been at work, and intelligent people now know that every human being is the product of the endless heredity back of him and the infinite environment around him. He is made as he is and he is the sport of all that goes before him and is applied to him, and under the same stress and storm, you would act one way and I act another, and poor Dicky Loeb another.” –Clarence Darrow (closing argument, defendant’s Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold)

If determinism is true, there is no free will. If there is no free will, there is no morality, and this eliminates one of the great questions posed by the late (great) Christopher Hitchens; “One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation?” For the determinist, the answer is neither. There are no true morals, because there is no free will.

(Continued on next post)

I was in court recently with a good friend of mine who is a determinist, insisting free will is an illusion. I love this guy because he’s always up for some good mental gymnastics, and he began our discussion by commenting on how silly it is that the world as we know it amounts to nothing more than a happy accident. We’re just moist robots programmed to behave according to the dictates of an infinite series of prior causes (How can there be an infinity of physical things? That’s a story for another day).

Sure, there are lots of deterministic things going on in science, but the evidence has yet to prove that we have no free will. Yet, I’m not sure I can prove it exists either, I’m just saying. But, I can dig into my Samsung flat screen and find the electrical impulses that help me watch the NFC playoffs as I write this. The thing is, those electrical impulses don’t explain the football game anymore than the neuroscientists are proving the NFL playoffs don’t exist because they’ve discovered the bio-electrical impulses in my brain that correspond to football. Maybe there’s something else out there, that is not subject to repeatable experimentation (remember, scientists declared that rocks falling from the sky could not be true because they had no way of explaining it–we now know meteorites are fairly common events even if we can’t experiment on the phenomena). There are plenty of “defeaters” out there to determinism, but much of this scientific research is swept under the rug because it doesn’t fit into current understandings of how the world works (decades of research into near death experiences is but one example, if folks have the courage to go where this data leads).

Should science convince the world that free will is an illusion–we must move past notions of “punishment” and “sentencing”. This is not just intellectual musings; concepts of free will impact the criminal courts on a daily basis. Still, there are a few well known folks that refuse to face the implications of their beliefs. Einstein was just such a person: “I am compelled to act as if free will existed, because if I wish to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly . . . I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime, but I prefer not to take tea with him.” Look, most of us are only seeking the truth (except, when I’m defending someone who is guilty, of course), so if the truth is that there is no free will, let’s stop pretending. The bottom line here is best expressed by Professor Shaun Nichols in his lectures entitled Free Will and Determinism: “if science convinces us that free will is an illusion, we seem to face a moral conclusion that is difficult to accept: that all criminals should be excused for their crimes.” (The Great Courses). Will scientists shut down the criminal justice system? Please. The same scientists that claim free will doesn’t exist will be the first ones to scream bloody murder should one of my clients wrong them in any way.

by The Law Office of John Guidry II

https://www.orlandocriminaldefenseattorneyblog.com/free-will-determinism-criminal-justice-system/

Ajax said:

..youtube..

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If you spend too much time watching youtube, you will be deluded.

If free-will is an illusion, then why bother to listen or believe in anything that people say?
If people are not the ones saying it, then who is?

If it IS people who are saying it, then we need to consider WHY they are saying it.
In any case, some people have confidence in those with status .. and some people haven't.

Spice said:

No. Free will is having the choice to go against your better judgment, aka, your conscience.

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Free will is usually defined as the ability to make choices independent of nature or nurture. Emphasizing the autonomy of an individual's choices from deterministic or pre-determined factors like genetics (nature) or upbringing and environment (nurture). Philosophers often debate whether true free will exists or if our choices are always influenced by these factors in some way. The concept ties into discussions on moral responsibility, consciousness, and even legal implications, where the degree of one's free will affects how their actions are viewed and judged.

ppp said:

Free will is usually defined as the ability to make choices independent of nature or nurture.

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In my mind that is going against ones conscience. Conscience is innate hereditary factors shaped and added to by environment.

ppp said:

Emphasizing the autonomy of an individual's choices from deterministic or pre-determined factors like genetics (nature) or upbringing and environment (nurture).

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Agreed

ppp said:

Philosophers often debate whether true free will exists or if our choices are always influenced by these factors in some way. The concept ties into discussions on moral responsibility, consciousness, and even legal implications, where the degree of one's free will affects how their actions are viewed and judged.

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Free will is simply demonstrated in the experiment with a child left alone in a room with an Oreo cookie. The child is told that if they leave the cookie alone, they'll get two cookies when the adult returns, but if they eat this cookie, that's all. There will be no more.

It's been shown with multiple children, they all struggle with their conscience. Some eat the cookie. Some do not. And with a wide variety of thought processes when asked why they made the choice they did.

Free Will -- believing to be aware of the consequences of one's choice (right or wrong), weighing the options, and choosing.

ppp said:

Free will is usually defined as the ability to make choices independent of nature or nurture.

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I do not believe that s possible. I believe in deterministic free will.

Spice said:

In my mind that is going against ones conscience. Conscience is innate hereditary factors shaped and added to by environment.

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I don't see that. Conscience is a combination of the human tendency of those of all social mammals (fairness, reciprocity, empathy and cooperation), plus that which is learned from one's society. I don't see any other demonstrable factors playing into it. Do you? What?

Spice said:

Agreed

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Spice said:

Free will is simply demonstrated in the experiment with a child left alone in a room with an Oreo cookie. The child is told that if they leave the cookie alone, they'll get two cookies when the adult returns, but if they eat this cookie, that's all. There will be no more.

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That is certainly will, but it seems to me that it is tethered. Tethered to competing desires that are arbitrated out in the brain. What other factor is there?

Spice said:

Free Will -- believing to be aware of the consequences of one's choice (right or wrong), weighing the options, and choosing.

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I am sorry, but in the example given I do not see anything that is right or wrong. Or anything that is untethered from the brain and from the environment.