Free will deniers

[Trailblazer]

If I choose what to do, I am choosing what course of action I will take.
If I choose what I want to do, I am choosing my will itself. To illustrate, if I can choose my will, I can choose to want to sleep early today, rather than merely proceeding to sleep early today.

You cannot choose to want to sleep, not any more than I can choose to want to have sex. I either want to have sex or I don't want to.
I don't want to have sex, so I cannot choose to want to have sex. I might have sex anyway, or not, even though I don't want to.

 

[Trailblazer]

Even if there is coercion, there is a will.

True.

Sure. Otherwise, the existence of free will would require omnipotence.

True.

 

[Trailblazer]

And they have standards. They don't have sex with anyone.

Some do and some don't.

 

[idea]

Nurture/nature - products of DNA/environments. It seems to take a traumatic event to rip us away from our cultural background, upbringing, media. With school- exposure to new information, critical thinking, if capable of self-reflection, empathy, and open-mindedness... After realizing our own bias, stepping outside ourselves, we can then take steps to improve physical health (DNA), and broaden/change our previous views (old environmentfor new one).

To me - if I learn someone has profoundly changed their views, that is the closest to free will there is. Of course, that change is usually traced back to nature or nurture.

 

[Ponder This]

I had a mentor in the past whom I met again after 10 years. A philosophy professor. He told me something about free will: there are several kinds of people. Those with enormous volition that use their willpower to do either good things or bad things; and there are people with scarce volition who are too scared to use their own free will, for they don't want to commit mistakes. There are so many shades of individualistic cases inbetween.
He also told me that free will deniers are usually people with a big volition who use their prepotency to destroy other people's lives.
They deny free will exists because admitting it does exist would make them feel guilty of all that they have done unto others.
It's a self-defense mechanism not to feel guilty.
What do you think, guys?

It's not clear to me that most of the people who profess not believe in free will also believe that they are not responsible for their own choices, which is... kind of funny actually. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's a good poll question.

 

[Debater Slayer]

While there are many ways of viewing free will, that seems like an extremely high threshold

It definitely covers all possible constraints. It's not the only definition of the concept that I find incoherent, though. For instance, this one allows for much more determinism but still doesn't seem robust to me as a concept:

"The capacity for a conscious agent to voluntarily choose from two or more available alternatives."

Even in the above definition, the choice between the available alternatives—which would be constrained by many things beyond the agent's control—still presupposes a coherent notion of a "choosing self." If we have no self outside of our biology, what is this choosing self other than merely a function of natural processes that we don't control? Even if those processes were completely random, we wouldn't be in control of the randomness governing our bodies and, by extension, our consciousness and its emergent phenomena (e.g., the notion of "choice," thinking, etc.). Whether said processes are random or deterministic seems to me beside the point.

A lot of brain conditions affect personality, behavior, and thoughts, which also further suggests to me that our sense of "self" is just a manifestation of natural processes and is not something we can freely "choose" to modify. A quote that comes to mind regarding the notion of free will is, "I can do as I wish, but I can't wish as I wish." The natural laws governing our bodies' functioning—and our resultant sense of "self"—are happening as we speak and can't be changed by us.

 

[Nakosis]

I am not sure I completely understood you. Can you elaborate?

I suppose the easiest way to say it is I don't think your "ultimate motivation" which drives your decision is predetermined until after you've considered your options.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Remember the red shirts and the blue shirts?

How could I forget?

 

[Koldo]

One question: when you have sex with someone, are you choosing what to do?
or are you choosing what you want to do?

I am choosing what to do. Do you agree?

 

[Koldo]

I am not so sure that when we make a choice we are consciously thinking of another choice we could have made. I can give you many examples.
I choose to scoop the litter boxes every morning, but I am not thinking that I could do something else instead... I just scoop them.

I wouldn't call it a choice if you are not thinking between alternatives (such as at least not doing something). But I also don't think this is the relevant to the debate per se. We shall see.

I don't do anything I don't want to do unless I cannot live with the consequences of not doing it.
There are always consequences for not doing something I might not want to do.

Exactly. Then wouldn't your choices either be all about doing what you want to do or avoiding outcomes you don't want?

 

[Koldo]

You cannot choose to want to sleep, not any more than I can choose to want to have sex. I either want to have sex or I don't want to.
I don't want to have sex, so I cannot choose to want to have sex.

Great. We agree.

I might have sex anyway, or not, even though I don't want to.

Ok. Can you elaborate on why you would do something even though you don't want to?
Is it because you want to avoid a certain consequence as you were talking or are you thinking about something else?

 

[Koldo]

I suppose the easiest way to say it is I don't think your "ultimate motivation" which drives your decision is predetermined until after you've considered your options.

But what if the way you are considering your options is predetermined in itself?

 

[Nakosis]

But what if the way you are considering your options is predetermined in itself?

Predetermined by what?

 

[Trailblazer]

I wouldn't call it a choice if you are not thinking between alternatives (such as at least not doing something).

Not doing x vs. doing x does not imply a choice between x and y, unless you are thinking of doing x or y.

Exactly. Then wouldn't your choices either be all about doing what you want to do or avoiding outcomes you don't want?

I choose to do what I want to do (x) but sometimes I choose to do what I don't want to do (y) in order to void the consequences if not doing y.

 

[Koldo]

Predetermined by what?

A chain of cause and effect, like a domino effect.

 

[Trailblazer]

Ok. Can you elaborate on why you would do something even though you don't want to?
Is it because you want to avoid a certain consequence as you were talking or are you thinking about something else?

Yes I can elaborate. Using sex as an example, I might have sex even though I don't want to have sex in order to avoid the consequence of never getting married again, since there are no men that I know of who will marry me unless I am willing to have sex with them.

 

[Koldo]

Not doing x vs. doing x does not imply a choice between x and y, unless you are thinking of doing x or y.

'y' is 'anything other than x, including merely not doing x'.

I choose to do what I want to do (x) but sometimes I choose to do what I don't want to do (y) in order to void the consequences if not doing y.

Awesome.
There are two possibilities then:
(1) choosing something because you want to do it
(2) choosing something not because you want to do it but in order to avoid the consequences of not doing it.

But (2) can be rephrased as: choosing something because you want to avoid the consequences of not doing it.

So in both 1 and 2, what determines your choice is what you want (either wanting to do something, or wanting to avoid a certain consequence).

 

[The Hammer]

Universal awareness is being aware that we, as human beings, have all legitimate desires and aspirations.

The number of people who legitimately meet/undsrstand this definition, are few and far between.

 

[Trailblazer]

'y' is 'anything other than x, including merely not doing x'.

Fair enough.

There are two possibilities then:
(1) choosing something because you want to do it
(2) choosing something not because you want to do it but in order to avoid the consequences of not doing it.

But (2) can be rephrased as: choosing something because you want to avoid the consequences of not doing it.

So in both 1 and 2, what determines your choice is what you want (either wanting to do something, or wanting to avoid a certain consequence).

Fair enough.

 

[Nakosis]

A chain of cause and effect, like a domino effect.

You're simply begging the question.
What if it's not?