I want to believe...

[Do4600]

I have nothing that I believe in that isn't supported by facts and/or logic.
Although I still find that I am in the minority when it comes to not believing in 'free will'.

That's funny; I don't know where the majority lies, but I was going to submit 'free will' as mine.

Last time I argued about it with someone, I stripped naked to prove the point. We were not drunk and we were not alone. Next time you're out for a walk, and you need to turn right, turn left instead. Go ahead. You can do it.

You could have just as easily been fated to strip naked and take a left turn when you were going right, and fated to feel excited that you were exercising "free will". It proves nothing.

I've always thought that it doesn't matter whether we have free will or not because we will never know. If we can't know the future we can never know if we could have done something different that would have changed or not changed the course of events. It's like Schrödinger's cat, except we don't even have the ability to determine it's condition. It's totally irrelevant what you believe as far as free will is concerned, it only serves to color how you see events.

Let's say I'm scheduled to get on a plane that will crash, for whatever reason I decide not to board the plane. I could be exercising free will and altered the course of my life, or I could be fated to not board the plane, however even if I was fated to not board the plane I may also be fated to thinking I did it through free will, or fated to believe that I was fated to not board the plane, the converse is also true, I could, with my free will, believe that I have free will which allowed me to change my destiny and not board the plane, or believe that I was fated to not board the plane even though I was in fact exercising free will by not boarding the plane. The real answer is that it doesn't matter if I have free will to not board the plane or am fated to not board the plane, the incident has occurred and I have absolutely no way of knowing which of those cases is true.

The question of free will only has meaning if you have an entity that knows the outcome before it happens, in which case you don't have free will because knowing the outcome is necessarily dependent on the event being static and unchangeable.

Hence, if a god exists, we don't have free will because being able to change the outcome of events would void god's prescience. But because I don't believe a god exists it could easily be any of those outcomes and more.

 

[Phuctifyno]

You could have just as easily been fated to strip naked and take a left turn when you were going right, and fated to feel excited that you were exercising "free will". It proves nothing.

You're right, it doesn't. Before you begin down the dark path, like some others, I'd like to stress there was nothing serious about the post, beyond the statment that I do, in fact, believe in free will. The nudity incident was more for laughs than making any kind of point cuz the other guy was arguing on a "you can only pick the best of two choices because alpha-ism or something" level. God help the witnesses, who looked on in horror as I waggled my junk and ominously proclaimed "This is not your destiny.", then called the police. K, that last sentence may not have actually happened.

I've always thought that it doesn't matter whether we have free will or not because we will never know. If we can't know the future we can never know if we could have done something different that would have changed or not changed the course of events. It's like Schrödinger's cat, except we don't even have the ability to determine it's condition. It's totally irrelevant what you believe as far as free will is concerned, it only serves to color how you see events.

This is basically how I understand it too, but that the belief itself, pre-determined or not, is historically shown to make a difference. As far as we can perceive, we're given a choice to believe it or not, and choosing to is simply more productive. It's only totally irrelevant if free will is actually proven false (of course there are strong philisophical arguments, but I don't see proof), since there's no consequence for being wrong about it. If, however, you believe it is false while it ends up being true, then you've got a shit-ton of responsibility being neglected, with all kinds of consequence. How we see events I don't think is as important as how we can affect them, regardless of how we see them.

The question of free will only has meaning if you have an entity that knows the outcome before it happens, in which case you don't have free will because knowing the outcome is necessarily dependent on the event being static and unchangeable.

Hence, if a god exists, we don't have free will because being able to change the outcome of events would void god's prescience. But because I don't believe a god exists it could easily be any of those outcomes and more.

Well, God I'm not sure I want to get into (because there are versions that both allow and disallow free will), but what you said here is in pretty close proximity to why I can't accept determinism or a static/unchangeable universe, which involves an optimistic claim that the knowing entity would be us.

The way I see it (which is admittedly limited), to believe the universe and all of it's events are dictated by fate, destiny, determinism, etc., but in a scientific way, you would also have to believe that it is a completely materialistic one, as far as current science can show. Now, if it was completely materialistic, it would then theoretically be completely observable, if science were only advanced enough. But if science one day became advanced enough to observe all the components and predict the future, everything we know about free will so far indicates that we would then still be granted the ability to change it, just as we already do with what little foresight we can currently gather.

That's what kind of unravels the whole thing for me, anyway. I can only fathom being able to forsee a future with mutiple outcomes, like Schrodingey's Pussy, in which case free will would still be apparent. I'm sure someone else could see it differently, but it eludes me.

But if you ask me, honestly, these are awfully great lengths to go to give us an excuse to get naked.
Because I know that's what we all want here.