free will

[PromethianSpark]

Free will exists, regardless of whether or not one wishes to believe in it. Same as love and mental illnesses (yes, I have heard of people saying that Mental Illnesses don't exist, it is all *made up* in the person's mind).

I am not going to elaborate on an absurd question like this, as there is no point. There is little chance to sway someone who so devotedly believes that free will doesn't exist that it actually does. Let them believe everything is "written in stone". I will be over here living my life to the fullest that I can.

While I have already conceded in this thread that arguments for determinism can never actually prove that there is no free will, I doubt you or any one else can muster a decent argument for its existence, other than blind faith thinly veiled in bad examples of 'choice' in action. I suspect this is the real reason you do not try. Even my philosophy professor who staunchly defended freewill against me and the other determinists in the class, admitted that he could only say that he believed in free will and could produce no rational argument for it. It is in the nature of our consciousness (itself a product of the brain) that we perceive the world and ourselves as though we have free will, but this is no more a guarantee than it is that we all perceive colours the same. Staunchly holding on to the idea of free will in the absence of a rational argument suggests to me an inability to be skeptical of ones own perception of reality and/or a profound attachment to a narrative of self.

On the subject of mental health that you brought up, I am aware of people who deny its existence. I live in Northern Ireland where there are many 'hardcore' Christians who also deny its existence. It is funny though that you brought this up, because it seems that the chief reason they do so, is that they find objectionable its use in explaining and excusing (to some degree) human behaviours. In other words, it strongly conflicts with their world view of the connected concepts of Free Will, Sin, and Judgement. It is extremely difficult to reconcile the idea that murdering a child is an irredeemable Sin for which you will burn in hell, with the idea (or fact) that a women experienced such crippling and psychosis inducing post-natal depression that she murdered her child in a fit of insanity. An idea that is even legally considered a temporary lose of free will. TO believe in free will and mental illness simultaneously is like saying that we have free will, except for when our brain chemistry alters sightly. To which I ask, what is the magic balance of brain chemistry that produces free will, and if all people have slightly different brain chemistry, how does that even work?

Finally,your contention that you will be 'living [your] life to the fullest that [you] can',thereby implying that those who do not believe in free will are somehow lacklustre, cynical or depressed is completely absurd. I have believed in determinism since I reached the age of reason, and anyone who knows me knows I have a zeal for life. I don't even need to prove that, the very idea is a house of cards. Its like Christians believing that atheism results in some existential crisis that causes depression at best, and evil at worst. Even in you are not an atheist you must surely know that is not the case. Abstract believes about the nature of reality and our place in it rarely, if ever, influence how we think, feel and behave.

 

[Whatwhat]

"-snip-

TLDR Randomness at the level of electrons does strongly indicate a presence of free will (some things are more probable to happen but you can decide literally anyway).

Source: I am physicist (well I am studying to be one).

Except the context it was initially used in that quote is Einstein's rebuttal to that very concept. he was postulating that all actions and reactions follow a set of causal links, including those we don't understand yet. It suggests that electron movement is ordered, but follow a system so complex we see it as disorder. This is basic level Chaos Theory where all systems follow set rules but appear random because a tiny change in the input creates vast disparities in outputs.

Well Einstein very famously hated the very concept of Quantum Mechanics and he spent the latter part of his life trying to disprove it (might I add that unsucessfully). You are right that there still is a possibility that there is a set of rules that eliminates the randomness but to see the rules you would have to looking at it all from the outside. For example if you are trying to determine the position of particle then how do you do it? You could possibly fire a photon at it and see if it is there. The shorter wavelength of the photon the more you know about the position of the particle but you bump it with a photon and give it momentum (you give it more momentum as it has a shorter wavelength). So to conclude this thread you can't possibly tell at the present moment if there is a free will or not. Statistically speaking there isn't but with every individual person there is could be a certain amount of free will.

 

[PromethianSpark]

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. Or the falling tree when no-one is around to listen. The fact that it's widely debated doesn't mean it's actually a good subject. Although the free will is quite interesting.

I am only being playful, but tell me, what did come first? (I Of course have an idea myself). As for the tree thing, biocentrism certainly renews that debate.

 

[PromethianSpark]

As I said, I am not going to take this seriously. Give me candy.

You ridicule an idea and perspective with out taking the time to learn anything about it. There is a word for that.

 

[zerragonoss]

snip

He is not ignoring since hes pointing out that their is a difference between the scientific definition and the social definition, and that difference is what the question is made to make you think about. Are you saying that it is impossible for people to have different definitions of a concept depending on their point of view?

On topic their are several ways to look at it. To start off is all the determinism argument assume the reality of the physical world. which is not really provable from withing the physical world.
To look at while assuming the physical world is real we can look at three definition of free will. One that exist for each person an independent entity that makes their decision and that exist outside the physical world, aka the soul. Two That all these that all these factors that make up your decision are you, so even though is just physics going to work its still qualifies as your choice. Three, the one I use, that you have an original cause influencing decisions through the law of physics.
Now when accepting the physical world you have to address infinite regress which is something pure causality can not do, as everything has to be because of something else. You run into problems going in two directions, More fundamental (What make the laws of physics work, than what makes those work ect), and origin of matter (where did stuff come from). From here you can fit in free will in two ways. first that each person has their own presence in the fundamental laws of physics. They are a unique set of rules that act only in very specif circumstances, or they have their own type of particle. Second that all your decision where made by a you at the creation of the universe, so things are deterministic now but are still made by an independent entity.

 

[PromethianSpark]

As I said, I am not going to take this seriously. Give me candy.

Posts on a forum, doesn't like to read....

I ridicule nothing. As I have said, I am not going to put in the time and effort to learn something that is complete bullshit.

 

[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. Or the falling tree when no-one is around to listen. The fact that it's widely debated doesn't mean it's actually a good subject. Although the free will is quite interesting.

I am only being playful, but tell me, what did come first? (I Of course have an idea myself). As for the tree thing, biocentrism certainly renews that debate.

I'll keep this short since it's been a long day, but the chicken came first because evolution would have to happen during embryology.

Now the process would be slow and gradual and generations upon generations of recombination, selection, mutation, random coupling, genetic drift and some other factors making the chicken, but all of these steps would happen in the egg phase thus the chicken is first.

He is not ignoring since hes pointing out that their is a difference between the scientific definition and the social definition, and that difference is what the question is made to make you think about. Are you saying that it is impossible for people to have different definitions of a concept depending on their point of view?

There's only a philosophical conundrum when you are ignoring the physical explanations, thus if he insists on making it one he can only do so by ignoring the science.

 

[Delance]

Any debate would be pointless if free will didn?t exist.

 

[PromethianSpark]

I'll keep this short since it's been a long day, but the chicken came first because evolution would have to happen during embryology.

Now the process would be slow and gradual and generations upon generations of recombination, selection, mutation, random coupling, genetic drift and some other factors making the chicken, but all of these steps would happen in the egg phase thus the chicken is first.

Well you thought about this completely different than me. I would have said the egg came first, because something that was not quite a chicken laid an egg from which a chicken emerged. A gross simplification granted, for at what point is an organism a chicken?

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.

If biocentrism is to be believed, as absurd as it is, isn't every thing/event basically Schroeder's cat? The tree exists in a state of having fallen and not, until it is observed by a living thing.

 

[zerragonoss]

There's only a philosophical conundrum when you are ignoring the physical explanations, thus if he insists on making it one he can only do so by ignoring the science.

I don't get the problem. Biology would define sound as the effect going on in the recipients brain. Physics by the vibration in the air. They are both science, and they both have their uses. So how is accepting that their are multiple possible definitions for sound unscientific?. The tree falls in the forest question is just supposed to make you look at the fact that you can look at if from different angles.

 

[Single Shot]

"-snip-

TLDR Randomness at the level of electrons does strongly indicate a presence of free will (some things are more probable to happen but you can decide literally anyway).

Source: I am physicist (well I am studying to be one).

Except the context it was initially used in that quote is Einstein's rebuttal to that very concept. he was postulating that all actions and reactions follow a set of causal links, including those we don't understand yet. It suggests that electron movement is ordered, but follow a system so complex we see it as disorder. This is basic level Chaos Theory where all systems follow set rules but appear random because a tiny change in the input creates vast disparities in outputs.

Well Einstein very famously hated the very concept of Quantum Mechanics and he spent the latter part of his life trying to disprove it (might I add that unsucessfully). You are right that there still is a possibility that there is a set of rules that eliminates the randomness but to see the rules you would have to looking at it all from the outside. For example if you are trying to determine the position of particle then how do you do it? You could possibly fire a photon at it and see if it is there. The shorter wavelength of the photon the more you know about the position of the particle but you bump it with a photon and give it momentum (you give it more momentum as it has a shorter wavelength). So to conclude this thread you can't possibly tell at the present moment if there is a free will or not. Statistically speaking there isn't but with every individual person there is could be a certain amount of free will.

Except we're not talking about the position as we can measure it, just it's real location and the reasons for it being there. Quantum theory is, at it's core, the science of explaining what cannot be directly observed due to scale. But just because we cannot observe the specific movement of a single electron around it's p-orbitals does not mean there isn't some set of natural rules to govern it. Any science that suggests using randomness as anything but a stop-gap until it technology advances to the point they can explain the behaviour is lazy. We have proven hundreds of times that what is considered random is usually just unexplained, look at the stripes on a zebra as a very simple example. At one time we called them random, then we learned that they acted as identification for each individual member of a community. Now we understand their shape and size depends on a complex system of genetic factors, combined with developmental factors such as nutrient availability, physical stresses, and mother-secreted hormones during the pregnancy.

Also, check your facts. Einstein never really tried to disprove Quantum Physics, he just thought of the subject in terms of local realism and as such that there could be no instantaneous long-distance interactions in his viewpoint. That was finally proven wrong by Bell's theorem in the 60's where quantum entanglement of photons was shown. But while it was proven that interactions could indeed be instantaneous over distances, no proof (that I am aware of) has ever proven randomness exists as anything other than a poorly understood/currently undetectable system.

"Quantum mechanics is very worthy of regard. But an inner voice tells me that this not yet the right track. The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that He does not play dice."

 

[Yopaz]

I don't get the problem. Biology would define sound as the effect going on in the recipients brain. Physics by the vibration in the air. They are both science, and they both have their uses. So how is accepting that their are multiple possible definitions for sound unscientific?. The tree falls in the forest question is just supposed to make you look at the fact that you can look at if from different angles.

Biology isn't a separate entity than physics, the physical definition is also used to explain what we actually sense. My definition of sound is taken straight from the book called human physiology. There is no biological definition of sound, there's a biological explanation of why we hear sound which explains how the energy is transformed into a stimuli which varies based on where the wave stops and where it peaks inside our inner ear.

So I repeat this biology and physics aren't separate, they work within the same boundaries, something that is physically impossible isn't biologically possible. It's all based on the same science.

Now the process would be slow and gradual and generations upon generations of recombination, selection, mutation, random coupling, genetic drift and some other factors making the chicken, but all of these steps would happen in the egg phase thus the chicken is first.

Well you thought about this completely different than me. I would have said the egg came first, because something that was not quite a chicken laid an egg from which a chicken emerged. A gross simplification granted, for at what point is an organism a chicken?
[/quote]

Yeah, that's a good way of explaining it.

 

[PromethianSpark]

TLDR Randomness at the level of electrons does strongly indicate a presence of free will (some things are more probable to happen but you have the possibility of deciding anyway you want to).

Source: I am physicist (well I am studying to be one).

I still can't believe physicists and physicists in training still believe this crap. I am no physicist, but as someone with an MA in sociology, but more importantly good training in philosophy as well, I take a keen interest in any knowledge that may have philosophical implications, and I can tell you honestly that in all the areas that physicists have recently tried to add to the free will debate, their claims have all stemmed from the widest of logical leaps and philosophical ignorance.

For a start, I would merely ask how an inability to accurately measure an electron holds any bearing on this subject matter? In a later post you admitted yourself that this may (most likely) has more to do with our means of detecting electrons than it does for any intrinsic property of the electron. But even if it where so, that the quantum level is completely indeterminate (which is yet to be proven), this would suggest that probability is not in fact a product of lack of knowledge, but rather like time, is a very real thing in our universe. This of course means randomness, which is no better a foundation for free will than a deterministic universe.

 

[Guffe]

Even if my actions are "pre-made" by, let's call it, "bagundah".
But I wouldn't know this, I think my actions are free will.
If no one ever knows bagundah dictates our lives then it's free will??

-.-
damn, I started thinking too much about that and now I'm dizzy...

 

[Whatwhat]

Also, check your facts. Einstein never really tried to disprove Quantum Physics, he just thought of the subject in terms of local realism and as such that there could be no instantaneous long-distance interactions in his viewpoint. That was finally proven wrong by Bell's theorem in the 60's where quantum entanglement of photons was shown. But while it was proven that interactions could indeed be instantaneous over distances, no proof (that I am aware of) has ever proven randomness exists as anything other than a poorly understood/currently undetectable system.

"Quantum mechanics is very worthy of regard. But an inner voice tells me that this not yet the right track. The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that He does not play dice."

I may have extrapolated a bit but if I created a theory but something in me would have kept on gnawing me and telling me that it is not quite right (when making assumptions to solve phyysics problems this happens waaay to often) and that I am just being lazy I would do two things. A) I would hate my own creation for making me feel these feelings and B)I would have tried to get rid of the thing that bothers me in my theory (The fact that he didn't publish anything just says that he was a tad unsucessful.) If I were him I would have probably spent all my time at the Institute for Advanced Study trying to get rid of the bloody dice.

Except we're not talking about the position as we can measure it, just it's real location and the reasons for it being there. Quantum theory is, at it's core, the science of explaining what cannot be directly observed due to scale. But just because we cannot observe the specific movement of a single electron around it's p-orbitals does not mean there isn't some set of natural rules to govern it. Any science that suggests using randomness as anything but a stop-gap until it technology advances to the point they can explain the behaviour is lazy. We have proven hundreds of times that what is considered random is usually just unexplained, look at the stripes on a zebra as a very simple example. At one time we called them random, then we learned that they acted as identification for each individual member of a community. Now we understand their shape and size depends on a complex system of genetic factors, combined with developmental factors such as nutrient availability, physical stresses, and mother-secreted hormones during the pregnancy.

The moment you get rid of the randomness in QM I think that you would have the global community of physicists proclaim you their new favourite person (Take that Feynman ) because neither I nor any of my classmates or (and this is only a suspicion) my tutors are really comfortable with this. It is all so counter-intuitive but it is the way the world behaves. The thing about the electron was just an example ( and not a well chosen one perhaps). A better one would be an electron trapped in potential well with a lower kinetic energy than the potential well but he would still have a small probability to tunnel out even though from a deterministic/classical point of view he shouldn't be able to do so. The way I see it this electron could be part of your thought process and could influence it and so maybe on some level this is "free will" but as I am saying this is a) just guessing and b) maybe proven wrong in a couple of years (but quantum tunnelling does exist in the real world and we see it's effects (alpha particles and what-not))

 

[TheIceQueen]

I ascribe to William James' pragmatism. "At any rate, I will assume for the present. . . that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will." Meaning, free will exists because one chooses to. Even if free will is an illusion, choosing to believe in it makes it useful (hence the philosophical position's name of pragmatism).

 

[Syzygy23]

Free will is supposed to not be predetermined by the law of cause and effect, but not random either. Thing is, those are really the only two options, so this "free will" thing doesn't seem that likely.

THere's as many options as you choose to make. Lets say you're driving your car down a road and see a fork in the road coming up. One has a sign saying "GRIZZLY BEARS" and the other has a sign saying "FALLING BOULDERS". Which path do you take?

Your only options are the boulder path and the grizzly path, right? WRONG. If it's me in that car, I say "Fuck this! I'm taking a THIRD OPTION!". Then I'd do a U-Turn and drive back the way I came. Or I could stop the car and walk through the terrain between the fork on foot.

See? Free will. As long as you keep your mind open to possibilities, you will always have as many choices as you want.

 

[Single Shot]

Also, check your facts. Einstein never really tried to disprove Quantum Physics, he just thought of the subject in terms of local realism and as such that there could be no instantaneous long-distance interactions in his viewpoint. That was finally proven wrong by Bell's theorem in the 60's where quantum entanglement of photons was shown. But while it was proven that interactions could indeed be instantaneous over distances, no proof (that I am aware of) has ever proven randomness exists as anything other than a poorly understood/currently undetectable system.

"Quantum mechanics is very worthy of regard. But an inner voice tells me that this not yet the right track. The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that He does not play dice."

I may have extrapolated a bit but if I created a theory but something in me would have kept on gnawing me and telling me that it is not quite right (when making assumptions to solve phyysics problems this happens waaay to often) and that I am just being lazy I would do two things. A) I would hate my own creation for making me feel these feelings and B)I would have tried to get rid of the thing that bothers me in my theory (The fact that he didn't publish anything just says that he was a tad unsucessful.) If I were him I would have probably spent all my time at the Institute for Advanced Study trying to get rid of the bloody dice.

Except we're not talking about the position as we can measure it, just it's real location and the reasons for it being there. Quantum theory is, at it's core, the science of explaining what cannot be directly observed due to scale. But just because we cannot observe the specific movement of a single electron around it's p-orbitals does not mean there isn't some set of natural rules to govern it. Any science that suggests using randomness as anything but a stop-gap until it technology advances to the point they can explain the behaviour is lazy. We have proven hundreds of times that what is considered random is usually just unexplained, look at the stripes on a zebra as a very simple example. At one time we called them random, then we learned that they acted as identification for each individual member of a community. Now we understand their shape and size depends on a complex system of genetic factors, combined with developmental factors such as nutrient availability, physical stresses, and mother-secreted hormones during the pregnancy.

The moment you get rid of the randomness in QM I think that you would have the global community of physicists proclaim you their new favourite person (Take that Feynman ) because neither I nor any of my classmates or (and this is only a suspicion) my tutors are really comfortable with this. It is all so counter-intuitive but it is the way the world behaves. The thing about the electron was just an example ( and not a well chosen one perhaps). A better one would be an electron trapped in potential well with a lower kinetic energy than the potential well but he would still have a small probability to tunnel out even though from a deterministic/classical point of view he shouldn't be able to do so. The way I see it this electron could be part of your thought process and could influence it and so maybe on some level this is "free will" but as I am saying this is a) just guessing and b) maybe proven wrong in a couple of years (but quantum tunnelling does exist in the real world and we see it's effects (alpha particles and what-not))

Yeah, you extrapolated a persons disagreement with the direction science took towards what couldn't, at the time, be proven and used it to say he wanted to destroy that branch of science... I'll let this go. Moving on.

You seem to be confusing determinism, the idea that there is a fundamental set of laws of the universe that determine all actions and reactions at all scales, with Local Realism, the idea that everything directly effects everything around it and nothing can effect anything it is not directly in close proximity to. Determinism in the sense is talk about it is the former, and it does not exclude those long distance entanglements or any other long distance effects. It just says that there must be a natural law that determines when they take place, and that law is a constant universally.

Einstein fought for Local Realism when it was legitimately he most realistic theory in existence, but it was disproven. Determinism however is totally impossible to prove one way or the other because it's core aspect suggests that free will can emulate determinism, and determinism can emulate free will, unless you can view multiple identical universe that are identical on every scale from the shape and size of the universe as a whole, right down to the spin and excitement on the last Tau Neutrino's and Charm Quark's.

 

[2HF]

I'm of the "fuck it, what does it matter" school of thinking. Either we have free will and yay, free will or we don't and shit goes down anyway and those who believe in free will were predetermined to do so. That being the case, why are we wasting time discussing it? Let's bone.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

While I believe that it is my choice to respond to this thread (which could demonstrate free will) it could just be that I am only posting here to point out that The Government directly controls people daily using nothing but colored lines on asphalt. Sharing that knowledge has likely released endorphins into my brain so as to reward me for being a smart ass online. Not so much free will as, me complying to a chemical desire on some subconscious level.

...

A MAN CHOOSES
A SLAVE OBEYS
A MAN CHOOSES
A SLAVE OBEYS

Oh that sweet, all-natural chemical rush...