@MrPaul Yes I can. Have you visited an attorney to draw up a will? It is anything but free.
@MrPaul
It doesn’t manifest itself in any way, at least for me. I never really stop whatever it is that I’m doing and go: “I’m doing this because I began to exist at a certain point in time, in a certain place, and was shaped by various cultural systems.”
@MrPaul If we could agree on the meaning of "will", that would probably help.
A chess-playing algorithm makes decisions for short- and long-term goals, based on data it has. Do we say it has "will", free or otherwise ? Humans are clever enough to understand the mechanism of their brain, but that doesn't make us much different.
@geoff1000 Let’s define “will” as ability to make a choice. Do you agree?
@MrPaul A tossed coin seems random, but the way it lands is decided by Physics. We wouldn't say it "chooses". A chess-playing algorithm decides what move to make, based on its mathematical determination of which is most likely to lead to a win. Is it "choosing" ? The Turing Test is an attempt by a computer to mimic a human with a few minutes of text messaging ; and they are just about doing that. A few more decades, and they will be "more human than human".
I think free will only exists when there are no consequences, because otherwise the consequences drive the decision. The obvious consequence is that other people learn of what we have done, and hence treat us differently ; so the test would require people to be certain there will be no consequences, which means also that we have no memory of what we did.
A decision which has no consequence isn't important, meaning that free will is only exercised when it is not important ; so it also isn't important.
@geoff1000 Consequences follow choices, but do they always drive the choice? I think the freedom to choose remains in the mind of the chooser as free will regardless of the perceived consequences. The simple act of deciding what to eat has consequences, including cost, health, environmental impact, etc., and one has the freedom to make a choice for oneself. Do the consequences drive that decision? If so, one would think that our menus would be much more limited than they are.
I think we need to separate freedom from free will. I think we all have free will, but not freedom from consequences of exercising our free will. The consequences often guide us to choose a certain way, but they do not strictly dictate our choices - we can make decisions regardless of the outcome.
When we make a choice to do something, we lose the option to not do it. A person who commits suicide, can thereafter make no further choices, which is a useful and natural inhibitor to such catastrophic behaviour.
I think it would be a bit of a stretch to say that I exercised free will today by not : committing suicide, deliberately crashing my car, punching my best friend in the face, or urinating in public to offend people. Those actions were not realistically probable, but were ruled out as being extreme. I did choose to ask a waitress about an item on the restaurant menu, and chose to not have it, but that was trivially consequential.
Yesterday I helped a motorist with a leaking coolant hose, and last Sunday I trimmed a fallen tree that was overhanging a road ; not because I wanted to help anyone, but because experience told me that if I didn't, I would somehow feel guilty afterwards. My conscience took away any free will I might have had to make the other decision. I am a slave to the outcome of the fight between my morality, and my instinct for self-preservation.
@geoff1000 Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil? Involuntary dilation of the iris?
Uh oh, I sense a philosophy major lol
@Cef1231 You mean someone majoring in philosophy with an advanced degree in unemployment.
How would one know one's choice was coming from freedom? How would one know that, or to what extent, one was conditioned unconsciously to respond as one does? What in your current experience of choice-making gives you the certainty that it is either a result of past conditioning or of present wild freedom given that most conditioning is unconscious? Can you be conscious of the forces within you that may be determining your every choice so that you can be free of them?
@FunCartel That's the only degree that doesn't cost cash; you pay for it in self-esteem.
@littermate
“How would one know that, or to what extent, one was conditioned unconsciously to respond as one does?”
Nobody exists in complete isolation. Well, that’s not entirely true—some have, and some do. Such people are feral. And yet, those persons are still held in thrall by baser instincts; to seek food, shelter, and warmth. To survive, as living creatures.
For the rest of us, one only needs to consider the values that were thrust upon them by their parents, guardians, etc. Those same values were passed onto their parents from their grandparents, and so on—those values being reflective of when, and where, the concerned persons happened to exist.
Imagine values as being a rowboat in the open sea—the sea being culture and history.
“What in your current experience of choice-making gives you the certainty that it is either a result of past conditioning or of present wild freedom given that most conditioning is unconscious?”
Reading about human history, and the experiences of others, makes me certain of this. I don’t believe myself to be exempt from culture, history, the affects of chemicals in my brain, or the simplest impulses that drive every living creature.
“Can you be conscious of the forces within you that may be determining your every choice so that you can be free of them?”
One cannot be conscious and free. However, there isn’t freedom to be found in nescience. Things would be a great deal simpler, though.
@exsanguinate
I apparently wasn't clear. What I meant by all of it really was, how could one possibly know whether one was moving from conditioning or not? Is there ever an act utterly free of conditioning?
Sounds like your experience and thinking leads you to say, no.
“Is there ever an act utterly free of conditioning?”
I doubt it.
Yes, getting that!
There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance. With a host of Holly Horrors that direct our aimless dance. A planet of playthings we dance on the strings of powers we cannot perceive. "The stars aren't aligned- or the gods are malign" Blame is better to give than receive. You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can chose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose the path that's clear I will choose Free Will
-RUSH
@exsanguinate Just because we have been exposed to social norms and conditioning does not mean that we behave a certain way and lack free will.
I was raised in the Roman Catholic faith but I do not follow or practice it. I was fed and ate meat most of my life but I gave it up. In high school parties I was surrounded by others drinking alcohol but I never drank it. I had friends that were prejudiced but I rejected that way of thinking.
Why did all of the peer pressure and social norms not influence me? I can only speak for myself, and I know people are different, but I’m not the only one.
Most of society would look at cuddling strangers we meet on the internet and think it’s wacky. Yet, here we are. Where is the conditioning that brought us here?
If one chooses to attribute all decisions to social influence, consider that society is made up of individuals and any idea of acceptable behavior must have at one time had its origin in one person. Where did this person derive the new thought?
Please help me to clearly understand how you arrived at your point of view.
Expanding my viewpoint a little bit here (despite the fact that no one asked me to):
Humans are biomechanical. Your brain and body are biological mechanisms—they operate according to the laws of cause and effect.
Like any complex system, a human being is difficult to predict because not all the factors are known.
If you don't know exactly how a watch is put together, for instance, precisely how each piece is shaped and how it affects (and is affected by) all the others, it's difficult to predict what will happen if, say, a change in temperature expands a certain piece of metal. Maybe the watch will stop. Maybe it'll lose time. Maybe it'll gain it. Unless all the factors are known, making an accurate prediction is nearly impossible.
So. Does a watch have free will? Different mechanisms will respond to the same stimulus (like a temperature change) in different ways. What makes one watch decide to stop, while another chooses to keep running?
A human being is a far more complex mechanism than a watch....
...But it's still a mechanism, still bound by the laws of cause and effect. The human brain isn't magical, even though it's certainly complicated enough to make you think it might be. To slightly alter Clarke's Third Law: "Any complicated system is indistinguishable from magic, so long as the one doing the distinguishing is sufficiently far behind in knowledge."
Watch A (as it is now) will always stop running in Situation 1. Watch B, on the other hand, will always keep on running in Situation 1—assuming no changes occur in the mechanism.
But changes are always occurring.
So Watch A stops running in Situation 1 today, but a week from now it keeps on running anyhow!
Of course, as a watchmaker, I can take it apart and tell you that it stopped in Situation 1 because a certain piece of metal was swelling and touching the balance wheel, but that piece of metal's been wearing, and the last time you dropped the watch it shifted away from the balance, so now they don't touch even when temperature shifts expand the metal. But to someone who doesn't understand the mechanism....
I don't believe that human brains exist outside the laws of cause and effect. I don't believe the web of electricity created by the brain—that neural web which is commonly called "the mind"—I don't think it exists outside the laws of cause and effect, either.
I do what I do because I am who I am (and I am who I am because I am what I am). In order to do anything different, I'd have to be someone different; someone not me.
That's not my idea of a desirable freedom.
“Why did all of the peer pressure and social norms not influence me?”
They compelled you, for whatever reasons, to seek alternatives. Deviating from norms is not original, or outside the influence of society/culture and accumulated human history.
We happen to exist during a time that is more accepting of deviation from the norm (to an extent). If you were born several centuries ago, departing from the Catholic Church would have likely been an unthinkable act. Maybe you’d eat some red meat on a holiday—that wouldn’t be free will, or a fancy new choice, though. You’d still be reacting to established social parameters.
“Most of society would look at cuddling strangers we meet on the internet and think it’s wacky. Yet, here we are. Where is the conditioning that brought us here?”
Mammals need touch to thrive.
“If one chooses to attribute all decisions to social influence, consider that society is made up of individuals and any idea of acceptable behavior must have at one time had its origin in one person. Where did this person derive the new thought?”
I don’t attribute all decisions to social influence. You’re skipping the bit about how our brains are wired as a species, and the primal urges that drive us as biological matter.
Whoever thought to deify the sun likely did so because it’s warm and provides light. Humans fare far better during the day, especially when it comes to hunting, gathering, etc.
Motor carriages were dreamt up because someone didn’t want to deal with horses anymore.
Marx and Engels thought capitalism was bad.
And so on.
@DarrenWalker Thanks for that explanation.
The human mind is rather like the atmosphere of the earth ; very complicated, but if we knew everything about it and what affects it, we could forecast the weather anywhere, any time ahead.
At some point, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle comes into play, but we can still put a probability on various outcomes.
@DarrenWalker @exsanguinate @geoff1000
Allow me to summarize my understanding of your points of view. Please correct me if I’m missing any important concept, or if I’m misinterpreting it.
We are physical beings composed of molecules that interact with each other and the external environment, according to the laws of physics, or chemistry, etc. We do not have any control over these interactions because they are governed by cause and effect, not by conscious will.
Variations in human behavior can be completely explained by the fact that no two of us experiences the exact same external stimuli, nor do we have any control over the random nature of molecules within our bodies that formed us according to a genetic program. All human behavior is therefore determined by forces beyond our control.
Assuming we could know the initial condition (position and velocity) of every subatomic particle in an organism, together with all the external stimuli acting upon it, we could predict the future condition of the organism with a probability having an error of no less than one half of the Planck constant. The accuracy of our prediction thus decaying the further forward in time we wish to predict.
@MrPaul Yes, that's about right. The "free will' we think we exercise, is simply the product of : what we are, and what we have experienced.
Other organisms are the same, but below a threshold of brain size, they don't have the mental capacity to think they have free will, so they don't worry about it.
If I crash my car, an electronic "brain" might decide to fire the airbags which will save my life ; and a human passing by, might use their cell phone to call an ambulance.
@MrPaul: We are indeed physical beings composed of physical things that are governed by physical laws. Our conscious wills are physical things.
I think that, assuming you could know the exact condition of all the parts of a human and their surroundings, you really and truly could predict the future condition of all of that with perfect accuracy, because of cause and effect. Our behavior is determined by our minds—in some cases by our conscious wills, in other cases by parts of our minds we're not so conscious of: habit and reflex and so on.
The patterns of electrical connectivity flickering over our brains are sometimes this shape, sometimes that shape... and the end result is that we exist: we think what we think, do what we do, and are more or less aware of it all.
And sure, if someone knew where all the connections in a human's brain were, and what stimuli caused exactly what neurons to fire at what level of strength, and precisely what stimuli were about to be delivered, that someone could know exactly what the human was thinking and what they'd do next. Of course, that someone would have to basically be God (it's a godly level of information, right there). And even so, who says the human isn't deciding, just because "god" can see the process unfolding and knows what the result's gonna be?
We determine our actions. So we're determined by other things—so what? We still choose.
To put it simply, if a kid loses hold of the string of their helium balloon and it doesn't float up, up, and away, that thing's not a helium balloon. The balloon is either free to be itself (i.e., a helium balloon), or it's free to not float. One or the other.
In the same way, I'm free to either be the person I am, or I'm free to not make the choices the person I am does. One or the other—I can't have both.
But so long as I am the person I am, and (therefore) choose the things I choose, aren't I free? Personally, I figure it doesn't matter that I only exist the way I do because of a whole ton of things outside my personal control. What difference does it make? I exist! And because I exist, I choose what I do. Think of it as a form of ultimate responsibility, if you like: my behavior is the direct result of my self. There aren't any excuses. I did what I did because I am who I am—to claim otherwise would be ridiculous.
And what, am I gonna argue that I didn't choose to be who I am, so that somehow alters the fact that I am who I am, and I did what I did?
To make that argument, I'd need the brain of a stump.
Speaking of stump-brains, if you want to discuss the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you'll have to take it up with somebody who isn't me—quantum physics isn't one of my specialties.
@Comfy_Arms Free will has nothing to do with religion. Religion is a man made construct, whereas free will is inherent to us as humans. Religion was designed by those wishing to constrain free will. There is no sin - sin is defined only in religious dogma. If you want to allow your life to be ruled by the parameters set by ancient, powerful men, then you have the free will to do so. As Rush said - I will choose free will 🙂
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Ok Bobby McGee
@willy353 I didn't say free will had anything to do with religion. I don't think I spoke about religion at all. I mentioned God, but that's not the same as talking about religion.
I did respond to someone else and quoted them and then replied to say religion and free will don't go together:
...and I'd paste it here now except my phone is not giving me that option for some reason.
But there is such a thing as sin, and not just in a religious context. Sin is real whether you believe in it or not. Just like God is real whether you believe in him or not. Science has shown us that the "simple" cell is actually a mind bogglingly complex array of molecular machines executing the codes-within-codes found in the DNA in the cell's nucleus. Codes don't write themselves. Intelligent programmers write code. So which is more plausible: Mindless random chemical reactions produced the DNA codes (and its codes-within-codes) over eons of time... Or a supremely intelligent being created it all? Hmmm?
Talking about God IS talking about religion. But I will not get involved in a religious discussion. I will not get involved in a religious discussion... I will not...
THUS PROVING FREE WILL. You are all welcome!
Whatever cosmic forces are at work, if free will does exist it is merely a crumb left behind to mankind as we truly are insignificant. Other beings opted for the Aluminum PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator