Freewill Revisited

[Vaderecta]

I think we can choose to do things but I also believe we are not free to do what we want.

Does that make sense?

So I've been a mess intellectually. All over the map. Normal reading has led me to meditation. Simple stuff. Stop for 5 minutes and focus on your breath... when you find yourself distracted and off on some tangent no judgement... just go back to the breath. Try to take control of what your mind focuses on. I want to focus on that time period... Five minutes.

I don't know about you but when I made real attempts at this my brain was so distracted. It stands to reason that those distractions influence our free will. For any serious people there are free meditation apps out there... headspace, waking up, others... I don't think you really need an app. So reading 21 lessons and this dude says he meditates two hours a day. Go back to five minutes.

I think we clearly don't have free will. You can make arguments that someone chose to do X, Y and Z and if only they were Catholic or Muslim they would have known better and chose differently. I agree in the sense that the people and environments we subject ourselves too and in that one sense we might have free will of some type but not the way most people think we do.

We seem to be products of our culture, genes and environment. I do not have any measurable control of any of those things so - its hard to argue I'm free.

 

[Subduction Zone]

There may be no free will, but for justice reasons we need to act as if it does exist. Treating people as if they were not responsible for their crimes only leads to more crime.

 

[Vaderecta]

There may be no free will, but for justice reasons we need to act as if it does exist. Treating people as if they were not responsible for their crimes only leads to more crime.

No disagreement there. Good point mate.

 

[Sunstone]

A computer can choose to do things, but does not have free will. Choice in itself is not an surefire indicator of free will.

You must demonstrate more than that we have mere choice to demonstrate free will. You must demonstrate that our choices are caused by "us" -- however you define "us". And that, as it happens, is an extraordinarily hard thing to do with any intellectual honesty and relevant knowledge at all.

 

[Sunstone]

As for justice, the concept need be based on free will if and only if your notion of justice requires punishment. If you propose, say, sentencing people to prison for purposes of rehabilitation and/or to deter others from committing crimes, you do not need to invoke that they had free will in order to justify doing so. But if you propose to sentence them in order to punish them, then justice requires that they acted freely.

 

[Vaderecta]

A computer can choose to do things, but does not have free will. Choice in itself is not an surefire indicator of free will.

You must demonstrate more than that we have mere choice to demonstrate free will. You must demonstrate that our choices are caused by "us" -- however you define "us". And that, as it happens, is an extraordinarily hard thing to do with any intellectual honesty and knowledge at all.

How does a computer choose to do things? That doesn't make any sense. Are you giving a computer an agency independent of the coder or creator?

I agree that choice by itself is not an indicator of freewill because the choice may have been made before the person is aware of what he chose. (We have evidence that shows this)

I'm not trying to argue we have freewill. I am suggesting that choosing things we can choose may give us some aspect of freewill. (The people we associate with and the locations we choose to travel too... Even still we don't really have control over those but we might have some influence over the actions we take to a certain degree.... We can't change our genome or culture... well maybe kanye can... but we may have some sway in the environment...)

 

[Sunstone]

How does a computer choose to do things? That doesn't make any sense. Are you giving a computer an agency independent of the coder or creator?

A computer can be programed to make choices. Is that not obvious to you? Are you at all familiar with how computers work?

I suspect you are defining the word "choice" in such a way that it necessitates some element of free will in your mind to make a "choice". I am not. I am defining "choice" as merely picking between options, by whatever means.

 

[Vaderecta]

A computer can be programed to make choices. Is that not obvious to you? Are you at all familiar with how computers work?

Absolutely. Are you aware of free will and saying a computer can be programmed to act a certain way and thus is making its own choices independent from how it was coded to do? Its doing what its told based on variables... it can't behave otherwise.

 

[Subduction Zone]

How does a computer choose to do things? That doesn't make any sense. Are you giving a computer an agency independent of the coder or creator?

I agree that choice by itself is not an indicator of freewill because the choice may have been made before the person is aware of what he chose. (We have evidence that shows this)

I'm not trying to argue we have freewill. I am suggesting that choosing things we can choose may give us some aspect of freewill. (The people we associate with and the locations we choose to travel too... Even still we don't really have control over those but we might have some influence over the actions we take to a certain degree.... We can't change our genome or culture... well maybe kanye can... but we may have some sway in the environment...)

a computer could be programmed to "choose" in much the same that we do. When we are hungry we eat, when our car runs low on gas we fill it up. When we need money we work (hopefully). It's decisions would be forced by the environment it comes itself in. I would not call that few will and that is also why your and my decisions may not be free will either.

 

[Sunstone]

Absolutely. Are you aware of free will and saying a computer can be programmed to act a certain way and thus is making its own choices independent from how it was coded to do? Its doing what its told based on variables... it can't behave otherwise.

Right. And cannot humans in some sense be "programmed" to pick between options without free will? Is that not a possibility?

 

[Vaderecta]

a computer could be programmed to "choose" in much the same that we do. When we are hungry we eat, when our car runs low on gas we fill it up. When we need money we work (hopefully). It's decisions would be forced by the environment it comes itself in. I would not call that few will and that is also why your and my decisions may not be free will either.

Agreed, Sunstone might have been being coy and trying to make the same point though. I am unsure and just curious.

 

[Sunstone]

Agreed, Sunstone might have been being coy and trying to make the same point though. I am unsure and just curious.

"Coy"? I think I was being pretty clear -- although it's hard to say what you mean by "coy". I certainly hope you did not mean I was pretending to be shy in order to seduce you.

 

[Vaderecta]

Right. And cannot humans in some sense be "programmed" to pick between options without free will? Is that not a possibility?

Yes, but my I'm trying to revisit this tired trope. Could we not have some form of freewill based on what we can actually influence. You may not have freewill over which arm you raise but if you took an active role in what environments you chose to subject yourself too could those environments effect your choices? Its not direct freewill obviously but is there some wiggle room in there for making mormons who grew up speaking english in utah react differently from icelandic atheists?

You can choose to become a mormon who lives in utah or an atheist in iceland and that choice will not grant you freewill but it may change the way you react to certain events. Maybe. Its a discussion not a sermon.

 

[Milton Platt]

How does a computer choose to do things? That doesn't make any sense. Are you giving a computer an agency independent of the coder or creator?

I agree that choice by itself is not an indicator of freewill because the choice may have been made before the person is aware of what he chose. (We have evidence that shows this)

I'm not trying to argue we have freewill. I am suggesting that choosing things we can choose may give us some aspect of freewill. (The people we associate with and the locations we choose to travel too... Even still we don't really have control over those but we might have some influence over the actions we take to a certain degree.... We can't change our genome or culture... well maybe kanye can... but we may have some sway in the environment...)

A computer makes choices continually.

I agree with you we can make choices and we have an illusion of free will. That is because we are not aware of all the things that are influencing our decisions. We might think we are making a decision based upon only a small set of criteria we are consciously aware of. But we are influenced by genetics, peer groups, society, past personal experiences, etc.

 

[Sunstone]

Yes, but my I'm trying to revisit this tired trope. Could we not have some form of freewill based on what we can actually influence. You may not have freewill over which arm you raise but if you took an active role in what environments you chose to subject yourself too could those environments effect your choices? Its not direct freewill obviously but is there some wiggle room in there for making mormons who grew up speaking english in utah react differently from icelandic atheists?

You can choose to become a mormon who lives in utah or an atheist in iceland and that choice will not grant you freewill but it may change the way you react to certain events. Maybe. Its a discussion not a sermon.

Certainly, you might react to events differently if you were a Mormon in Utah versus an atheist in Iceland, but if you started out as one, and then opted to become the other, would you be doing so out of free will? And would your reactions in either role involve free will? I don't see how it would make sense to assert that moving from the one context to the other in any way gave you some measure of genuine free will -- unless you had free will all along.

If you are looking for some limited sense in which there might be free will, Vaderecta, you might consider the ability of the conscious mind to negate decisions of the subconscious mind. That ability does not mean that anyone has free will in any strict sense of the term, but it is perhaps the closest anyone comes to having free will.

 

[Vaderecta]

Certainly, you might react to events differently if you were a Mormon in Utah versus an atheist in Iceland, but if you started out as one, and then opted to become the other, would you be doing so out of free will? And would your reactions in either role involve free will? I don't see how it would make sense to assert that moving from the one context to the other in any way gave you some measure of genuine free will -- unless you had free will all along.

If you are looking for some limited sense in which there might be free will, Vaderecta, you might consider the ability of the conscious mind to negate decisions of the subconscious mind. That ability does not mean that anyone has free will in any strict sense of the term, but it is perhaps the closest anyone comes to having free will.

But a Mormon could choose to change their nation and their religion and begin to learn a new language (Or the exact opposite) and that choice would likely change their actions. It would not be direct free will but more of choosing to experience things from another angle and then acting based upon the environment you are now exposed too. Its not genuine free will. I think that is an illusion or a false perception people have but if you uprooted and moved somewhere else and joined some random church and made new friends I think you would act differently. Just like a divorce makes people act like drastically different people who make choices completely out of character and a divorce might be a decision one made. Its not an argument for true free will but an argument there may be a way we can nudge ourselves onto better paths. We might have some semblance of choice outside of the environment, culture and genetics. (In the sense that as modern humans we can usually alter our environment as needed)

 

[Skwim]

There may be no free will, but for justice reasons we need to act as if it does exist.

Actually, we act as we do, even if it's a matter of embracing an act such as choosing, because we can do no differently. For reasons that will forever remain in the dark unknown, even I, a hard determinist, find myself forgetting about how determined everything I do is, and act under the illusion that I make choices. As with everything else it's an illusion that arises because it had to. As for reasons of justice, even if it's an absolute fact is that X murdered Y because he could not do otherwise, almost everyone of us forget about this salient detail and regard it as a choice---something freely made. Is it fair that we treat the murder, any murder, as a volitional act? Nope, but it's simply that all of us have been caused to mindlessly conclude that it is. Perhaps it's for reasons of survival that thoughts of deterministic causes rarely arise, but instead bring considerations of responsibility to the surface. Whatever it is there is absolutely nothing we can choose to do about it.

.

.

 

[Katzpur]

A computer can choose to do things, but does not have free will. Choice in itself is not an surefire indicator of free will.

Well, maybe that would explain why code sometimes doesn't work right. When my code didn't work, I always looked for a bug. It never even occurred to me that the computer "chose" to do something different than I, as the programmer, instructed it to do!

 

[Sunstone]

Well, maybe that would explain why code sometimes doesn't work right. When my code didn't work, I always looked for a bug. It never even occurred to me that the computer "chose" to do something different than I, as the programmer, instructed it to do!

You're missing the point. No one is saying a computer chooses to do something different than it's programed to choose.

 

[Nakosis]

I think we can choose to do things but I also believe we are not free to do what we want.

Does that make sense?

So I've been a mess intellectually. All over the map. Normal reading has led me to meditation. Simple stuff. Stop for 5 minutes and focus on your breath... when you find yourself distracted and off on some tangent no judgement... just go back to the breath. Try to take control of what your mind focuses on. I want to focus on that time period... Five minutes.

I don't know about you but when I made real attempts at this my brain was so distracted. It stands to reason that those distractions influence our free will. For any serious people there are free meditation apps out there... headspace, waking up, others... I don't think you really need an app. So reading 21 lessons and this dude says he meditates two hours a day. Go back to five minutes.

I think we clearly don't have free will. You can make arguments that someone chose to do X, Y and Z and if only they were Catholic or Muslim they would have known better and chose differently. I agree in the sense that the people and environments we subject ourselves too and in that one sense we might have free will of some type but not the way most people think we do.

We seem to be products of our culture, genes and environment. I do not have any measurable control of any of those things so - its hard to argue I'm free.

There are of course lot of things going on around us that influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Sometimes we consciously decide what influences to allow to affect our decisions and what to ignore. I think this ability depends a lot on our conscious awareness and our ability to imagine. If you decided on, because of what ever influences you choose to allow or disregard, then it is simply a matter of whether you are free to carry out the action you decided on or not. If you are free to act according to your will, your are free to act according to your will.

Some folks aren't, like people in prison. Also you might want to do something that is impossible. Sometimes one is free to act according to their will and sometimes not.