free will

[Flatfrog]

The chicken and the egg is also one of the most debated philosophical debates despite the fact that we have a definite answer for that question.

Do we? I wasn't aware of that. As far as I was aware, the topic of vagueness is still a fairly major philosophical area.

I mean - yes, the answer is clearly 'neither' or 'it's a meaningless question', just as it is for the tree falling in the forest, but as a jumping-off-point for a serious discussion about how we deal linguistically with vague categories, it's actually a pretty complex question.

 

[Flatfrog]

It isn't debatable.

Definition of Free Will:
the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

Where did you get that definition?

For most people, the discussion boils down to the question of whether there is more to consciousness than the physical atoms, obeying the laws of physics in the same way that all other atoms do. In that context, unless you are religious and believe in the soul it's pretty hard to argue that free will could exist (and even if the soul does exist, you're still stuck with explaining how it interacts with our physical bodies in order to create physical effects)

Now, there are ways to argue against that point (I've mentioned one above) but they're very subtle and certainly nowhere near as cut-and-dried as you suggest. Maybe you might want to think about it some more before dismissing some of the greatest minds on the planet as 'fucking stupid'.

 

[Yopaz]

The chicken and the egg is also one of the most debated philosophical debates despite the fact that we have a definite answer for that question.

Do we? I wasn't aware of that. As far as I was aware, the topic of vagueness is still a fairly major philosophical area.

I mean - yes, the answer is clearly 'neither' or 'it's a meaningless question', just as it is for the tree falling in the forest, but as a jumping-off-point for a serious discussion about how we deal linguistically with vague categories, it's actually a pretty complex question.

Evolution gives us the answer of the chicken and the egg. Evolution happens between generations not during the lifespan of an organism.

The falling tree... well that's simply the law of physics. Energy can't disappear or we'll violate the strongest laws known, the laws of thermodynamics with no known exceptions.

Unless we are to dismiss the theory of evolution and thermodynamics then we have the answers to these two. These are both very sound scientific theories with enough evidence to back it up which makes them pointless to discuss.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Was hoping someone could give me a real example of free will, or point me in the direction of a good study that disagrees with me.

I've come to believe we do not have free will. Genes, surroundings and experience dictate every action we make. This has not made me enjoy life less, I find it liberating.

However I love being surprised and am always looking to improve my rational. I challenge you to disprove me!

OK Genes are a part of our decision process, but they're not inescapable things. If that were true, then genetically speaking we're all destined to be whatever and no man or woman can ever have a valid complaint about life at all. We wouldn't be at fault or responsible for anything we do.
Thats a part of the whole eugenics thing that seems to keep creeping back into society like a cancer. I can't honestly agree with you, because doing so would validate the theory that intelligence is based on genes not the individual, and that we're all apart of some fucked up genetic lottery.
Thats the gene part.
Surroundings we can change to a degree (as long as its on this planet, or if we work REALLY hard we might be able to get off it) so surroundings don't dictate how we act except in reaction to climate and social pressures. Even then people do break away from the norm.
Experience is not something you can generalize and pop into a theory.
Free will. You wake up. You get out of bed. You choose what to eat, if you want to eat, what to drink, where to go, etc. None of these things are pre-programmed into us. They're not compulsory instincts. Human beings are a rare animal that can ignore base genetics and go AGAINST instinct. That my friend is free-will.

 

[Flatfrog]

Evolution gives us the answer of the chicken and the egg. Evolution happens between generations not during the lifespan of an organism.

What does that have to do with the question? The question says nothing about the lifespan of an organism. The question is 'what came first? The chicken or the egg?' (By which is obviously meant 'the chicken egg', of course; naturally eggs in general came long before chickens). An equivalent question often asked by anti-evolutionists is 'did the first human being have an ape for a father?'.

It's not a simple question because language is built around all-or-nothing categories and doesn't deal well with fuzziness. So the answer here is of course 'there was no first human being' but it's not a very satisfying answer because at some stage there were clearly no human beings and at some later stage there clearly were.

As for the tree in the forest, again that has nothing to do with thermodynamics and everything to do with the definition of 'sound' - if the air is vibrating somewhere, is it still a 'sound' if no one is hearing it?

 

[Flatfrog]

I think that dismissing free will is fucking stupid. Always have, always will. End of story.

But you won't explain why or argue against anyone's points. Sounds pretty closed-minded to me.

 

[Lightknight]

Free will is merely the ability to choose between available options. Just because you are who you are because of your environment and your genes doesn't make you any less you. It is still YOU choosing amongst the options.

Except that you're not actually choosing. You do one thing and under the exact same circumstances you will always do that same thing. Under different circumstances you might do something else, but if the circumstances were different, it wouldn't be the same 'choice' to begin with.

Doing the exact same thing under the same circumstances doesn't mean you don't have free will. It just means that your decision process isn't random. I would strongly agree that everything has a cause. That everything is a reaction of something else is entirely true. So yeah, the same forces acting on the same person would result in the same outcome. That's just consistency. That has nothing to do with whether you, being who you are, made the choice you made because of who you are instead of some outside force pulling at unseen strings.

How 'you' came to be is at the absolute core of the question.

Here's where I disagree. Just because there are reasons that you think the way you do doesn't mean that YOU, aka, the summation of everything that has made you you, didn't make that decision. So the discussion of how "you" came to be is besides the point. In framing the argument differently, you're basically saying that because you exist and had a cause to that existence that you don't have free will. That's somewhat of a red herring when "you" isn't yet properly defined.

You is the summation of all the components that comprise the organism that is you. That's your genes, your environment and the thought process and person that formed out of those scenarios. Do you make the decision you make because of who you are? Sure. Free will is just the ability to decide amongst options given more than one altertnative. We can do that, it's just that our decision process has reasons to choose one option over another because of the summation of "you".

Then again, it could easily be argued that having a robot learn and grow is just a different way of giving it instructions, and that in essence there is no difference at all. It's just that this time, it's the environment giving the instructions, not the programmer. After all, programming a robot to walk and letting it learn to walk by example give the same end result: a walking robot.

Programming a robot to walk is different from giving the robot the mechanical ability to walk and then letting it figure out how to do so on its own or by watching people around it. The inate desire to learn and mimic our environment does facilitate the learning in humans, but while that is genetically present, it doesn't mean that every subsequent action is some distant gene code directing our actions. We are the sum of many parts and the ability to make decisions based on our own internal self is all that we need to constitute free will.

A robot told to choose 1 does not have free will. A robot whose experience leads it to want to choose 1 while it has the ability to choose 2 or 3 does have free will in the choice. If we were all biology and no nurture, then we would not have free will. But it's that nurture bit, that extremely random and not predetermined experience bit of the equation that makes us uniquely "you".

 

[persephone]

Was hoping someone could give me a real example of free will, or point me in the direction of a good study that disagrees with me.

I've come to believe we do not have free will. Genes, surroundings and experience dictate every action we make. This has not made me enjoy life less, I find it liberating.

However I love being surprised and am always looking to improve my rational. I challenge you to disprove me!

I am curious why you find it liberating. Is it because you feel you aren't responsible for your actions? Or something else?

I think that genes, surroundings, and experience surely *influence* every action we make. But what makes you make the jump from "influence" to "dictate?" Do you believe we never have choice? What is the point of ever being angry at or happy with someone if they had no choice?

I would point out that genetic expression is *extremely* complicated, and only a small part of how our bodies work. I'll happily accept the argument that the workings of our bodies strongly influence or even in some cases dictate our actions (like how you MUST shut your eyes when you sneeze, your body gives you no choice), but that's a much broader scope than just "genetics."

I would also say that while we have free will, it isn't perfect. We are fundamentally, strongly influenced by many factors. Yet, we still do have free will, and we still can make choices. Were that not so, what meaning would our lives have?

I know that in my internal life that I have made choices, and not just based on my body, environment, and past. There have been times where there's been more than one option, each equally viable based on my many circumstances, and I have chosen one. If that is not an exercise of free will, what would you call it?

 

[Yopaz]

What does that have to do with the question? The question says nothing about the lifespan of an organism. The question is 'what came first? The chicken or the egg?' (By which is obviously meant 'the chicken egg', of course; naturally eggs in general came long before chickens). An equivalent question often asked by anti-evolutionists is 'did the first human being have an ape for a father?'.

I understand that this got a little too difficult for you to understand for you so I'll try to make it simple for you.

If the chicken were to have come before the egg then it would have needed to evolve before it got to the point of having an egg, which is during its lifespan. Since evolution does not occur during an organism's lifespan then it has to have occurred at a point before this, which would be in the span of gene recombination during meiosis and then developed in the stage of an egg. Thus the egg has to come before the chicken.

So you see, when I brought up lifespan I didn't mean that the question asked about lifespan I simply brought up basic evolution which explains that unlike in Pokemon evolution happens during an organisms embryology not during its lifespan. Why argue this from a philosophical point of view when we have had a scientifically sound explanation and we have had this explanation for more than 150 years now?

It's not a simple question because language is built around all-or-nothing categories and doesn't deal well with fuzziness. So the answer here is of course 'there was no first human being' but it's not a very satisfying answer because at some stage there were clearly no human beings and at some later stage there clearly were.

The fact that some people doesn't understand how something works doesn't mean the explanations science has for them aren't valid. I don't know all the details about how my microwave oven works, it's not a philosophical conundrum just because a lot of people share my ignorance. We have definite answers for it, some is hard to understand and some is easy.

As for the tree in the forest, again that has nothing to do with thermodynamics and everything to do with the definition of 'sound' - if the air is vibrating somewhere, is it still a 'sound' if no one is hearing it?

Sound has a physical definition, it's a form of energy that occurs when there are vibrations in an elastic medium (not air sounds spreads faster in liquids and even faster in solids). It's not a matter of subjective opinion or anyone around to hear it. Does a rock roll up hill because no-one who understands gravity is around to observe it? Does a compound increase its Gibbs free energy spontaneously because it just felt like it?

No, of course not. Physics aren't depending on someone to observe them to work. The fact that you would even consider that makes it clear that I won't bother replying any more to you. Dismiss science and focus on philosophy all you want.

 

[Zakarath]

I, personally, rather doubt the existance of free will. After all, the brain is basically a chemical-reaction-driven computer. It takes inputs from your senses, parses them, and directs responses. It's driven by the laws of physics (And it's not like our brains reference the quantum level when doing their processing, which doesn't really leave much capability for randomness). Therefore, though we don't have the capability to at our current level of technology, it is theoretically possible to, with a complete understanding of a person's brain, accurately predict their response to being confronted with a given situation. Therefore, free will doesn't exist.


This did get me down for a while, but I eventually came to stop worrying about it and just live my life and enjoy my path through it, whether or not I'm really 'choosing' it.

 

[DanielBrown]

I wasn't really arguing against you, simply pointing out that you should be careful about what sources you cite. The magazine is good, but it's filled with mistakes and inaccuracies that makes it hard to take it completely seriously. I read it myself and I would recommend it to people interested in science, but just because it's easily digestible and entertaining. If I find something that I find interesting I check out the source material. Sometimes it's well reported, sometimes it isn't. That's the problem when it's written by freelancer journalists.

Yeah, you're right, and I do agree with you. Just thought about that article when I read the thread and thought I'd contribute with it. I had however forgotten about the low cred they have. Haven't exactly read their magazine in close to ten years.

 

[Flatfrog]

If the chicken were to have come before the egg then it would have needed to evolve before it got to the point of having an egg, which is during its lifespan. Since evolution does not occur during an organism's lifespan then it has to have occurred at a point before this, which would be in the span of gene recombination during meiosis and then developed in the stage of an egg. Thus the egg has to come before the chicken.

You can use words like meiosis and gene recombination all you want but it has nothing to do with the question at hand, which is just the same whether you know about evolution or not. The question is 'how can something that is not a chicken produce a chicken egg?'

And the answer is 'chickenness is not an all-or-nothing thing'. Which is a philosophical question because it leads to a wider question of whether *any* word describes an all-or-nothing thing. And if words don't define clear categories, how do we use language at all? It's not a question about chickens!

Sound has a physical definition, it's a form of energy that occurs when there are vibrations in an elastic medium (not air sounds spreads faster in liquids and even faster in solids). It's not a matter of subjective opinion or anyone around to hear it.

Again you miss the point. Sound is not just a physical phenomenon, because the air is vibrating all the time in lot of different ways. What makes it a 'sound' is our brains, separating those vibrations into separate pieces and assigning meaning to them.

No one is suggesting that the tree doesn't cause the air to vibrate. It's just a question of whether that vibration can meaningfully be called a 'sound' (for what it's worth, I think it can, but it's nowhere near as obvious as you suggest).

 

[Zakarath]

Sound has a physical definition, it's a form of energy that occurs when there are vibrations in an elastic medium (not air sounds spreads faster in liquids and even faster in solids). It's not a matter of subjective opinion or anyone around to hear it. Does a rock roll up hill because no-one who understands gravity is around to observe it? Does a compound increase its Gibbs free energy spontaneously because it just felt like it?

No, of course not. Physics aren't depending on someone to observe them to work. The fact that you would even consider that makes it clear that I won't bother replying any more to you. Dismiss science and focus on philosophy all you want.

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that, because there's a few different definitions of sound. Sometimes, sound is starkly referred to as 'the vibration of a medium within the audibly range', in which case, yes, the tree does make a sound. But sound is also sometimes defined as 'the perception of vibrating air or some other medium as an auditory input', in which case, something isn't actually a sound until it is heard--before then, it's just vibrating air. Mostly semantics, perhaps, but still something that can be debated.

Also: Damn, ninjas.

 

[Single Shot]

-Mostly Snip-

At the end of the day this debate comes down to weather you believe humans are just a construct of organic and inorganic molecules arranged in a form able to comprehend higher thinking and maintain the chemical balance needed for 'life', or if you think we are somehow special and able to exist on a plain higher than the physical world. I myself think we are purely physical constructs and thus believe in determinism.

I'm responding to everything, but it's an interesting view so I kept it.

The universes will continue to be identical at the macro, physical level, but there's no way to prove that any organic life won't eventually diverge, and no way to absolutely determine what caused it.

I agree that humans are physical beings, but sometimes humans are arbitrary. Language, for example, has a specific quality called arbitrariness. There is nothing connecting the word "dog" to the physical creature. I think that if one of the most fundamental functions of human beings can have an arbitrary origin, it's hard to say that humans can't be arbitrary, and thus have free will.

Thirdly: Doesn't the entirety of most modern legal systems hinge upon the idea that people have free will? If they don't, if everything is going to fall into place eventually with no deviation, then how can you hold anyone accountable for anything? They committed the action, but they are just reacting to forces nobody can see, and so it's not their fault.

In the end, I don't think any of this matters because we can't really tell one way or the other. I like to think we have free will because it means people can be arbitrary, and thus make the world an interesting place, but there's really no way to prove it one way or the other.

I agree, there will never be any practical way to prove this one way or another, but there is also no real reason to think that given perfectly identical starts the two universes won't remain identical, and even less reason to think that organic life is any different from space dust from extra-solar mass ejections.

The examples you use are language and law. Language all comes from a common past and started as a relatively simple system of grunts. It evolved into what we know today via a complex process of social manipulations that were due to physical stimuli or human intelligence. Both of these could have been the result of either fee will or determinism because neither method precludes any action, just gives different views of if it could have happened another way.

Legal systems work similar to this because they assign guilt, or lack of, to the respective parties involved. Free will would suggest the people had free will and chose to act as they did when other options could have been taken, while Determinism suggests that the people acted as they did because those people chose to act the way they did because that action was the sum result of all involved factors. In both cases the people chose to act against the law and made their own decisions. Determinism just says they were always going to make that decision because of external factors, not that they didn't do it. An example would be the a murderer who picks a victim then attacks. That person chose a victim, even if it was predetermined he still had to go through the actions of picking, then killed them, which again the there own action whether it was predetermined or free will. That person is the product of the specific social and physical conditions of their life up until that point but can still be held accountable for the actions they chose to perform. If it helps you think of it like this. "Determinism allows choice on the individual level, but a specific person will always make the same choice when presented with perfectly identical situations, and the physics of a situation will always allow that choice to create the same outcome." - A phrase from a youtube video I watched, around 2009.

Again though, you're right. None of this really matters beyond this purely philosophical debate because it does not our ability to make, and take responsibility for, our own actions. Nor is it provable for either side to any degree of certainty.

"As I have said so many times, God doesn't play dice with the world." - Albert Einstein, 1943.

Once you see the universe as nothing more than a massively complex series of natural phenomena you realize that understanding everything happens for a reason doesn't make it any less random or fun when things happened unexpectedly.

 

[Hagi]

You can't discount free-will, scientific backing or no, lest you want to destroy the fundamentals of society.

Human society posits on a tenuous agreement for us not to destroy or harm one another. For the most part anyway.

If you say there is no such thing as free-will, then a murderer's only possible course of action is to murder, hence what crime did they commit? None, since they were compelled to do it. So now there's no law, or if we can read people's genes we destroy them before they become a problem. Whoops, we're Nazis again.

You're thinking of justice as a system of revenge. Something you do after the fact. You punish a murderer for what he has done.

Those who believe in determinism usually think of justice as a system of correction. You don't punish a murderer for what he's done. You punish a murderer so that he and others will not do that action again.

You punish crime not because criminals did wrong. You punish crime so that criminals will not do wrong again.

 

[Yopaz]

I wasn't really arguing against you, simply pointing out that you should be careful about what sources you cite. The magazine is good, but it's filled with mistakes and inaccuracies that makes it hard to take it completely seriously. I read it myself and I would recommend it to people interested in science, but just because it's easily digestible and entertaining. If I find something that I find interesting I check out the source material. Sometimes it's well reported, sometimes it isn't. That's the problem when it's written by freelancer journalists.

Yeah, you're right, and I do agree with you. Just thought about that article when I read the thread and thought I'd contribute with it. I had however forgotten about the low cred they have. Haven't exactly read their magazine in close to ten years.

Yeah, I just thought I should point it out, there's nothing wrong with the idea presented in the article and for general concepts it does provide a good point to start. Sorry if I came across as rude with my post, that wasn't intentional.

Sound has a physical definition, it's a form of energy that occurs when there are vibrations in an elastic medium (not air sounds spreads faster in liquids and even faster in solids). It's not a matter of subjective opinion or anyone around to hear it. Does a rock roll up hill because no-one who understands gravity is around to observe it? Does a compound increase its Gibbs free energy spontaneously because it just felt like it?

No, of course not. Physics aren't depending on someone to observe them to work. The fact that you would even consider that makes it clear that I won't bother replying any more to you. Dismiss science and focus on philosophy all you want.

Actually, it's a little more complicated than that, because there's a few different definitions of sound. Sometimes, sound is starkly referred to as 'the vibration of a medium within the audibly range', in which case, yes, the tree does make a sound. But sound is also sometimes defined as 'the perception of vibrating air or some other medium as an auditory input', in which case, something isn't actually a sound until it is heard--before then, it's just vibrating air. Mostly semantics, perhaps, but still something that can be debated.

Also: Damn, ninjas.[/quote]

There is a physical definition regardless of anything else. The tree will make a sound regardless of anything there to sense the vibrations. The energy will affect things and it will behave in a certain way characteristic for sound waves. Ultrasound and infrasound are also soundwaves and we can't hear them, they do exist though.

Also don't worry about being ninja's here, I'm ignoring the other guy just like he ignores science.

 

[zumbledum]

Was hoping someone could give me a real example of free will, or point me in the direction of a good study that disagrees with me.

I've come to believe we do not have free will. Genes, surroundings and experience dictate every action we make. This has not made me enjoy life less, I find it liberating.

However I love being surprised and am always looking to improve my rational. I challenge you to disprove me!

I suspect my opinion on the subject is about the same as yours. i think we have free will in so much as their is no plan no pre ordained path or guiding force , our decisions are totally ours. but that being said our brain is still a solid real thing thoughts are electrons down pathways everything is cause and effect there is nothing random so everything is theoretically predictable which holds for our thoughts and actions which although "free" are also predictable and without real choice.