Thoughts on Free Will as a concept.

[Unesh52]

Should I have put this in religion and politics? I thought maybe, but it's more philosophical...

Anyway. My mom is taking a psychology course and she was telling me about her class discussion on free will. We seemed to have a lot of trouble talking about it, as did they, and a brief google-reference to some scholarly article out of Stanford has given me little insight into the matter (probably because it's too long for 2 AM and I only read the intro).

Her idea seems to be thus: Free will is a person's ability to choose between available options without the influence of external factors. She supposes that if she has bread, ham, and turkey, then she can make a ham, turkey, or... turkam sandwich, and no one and nothing can stop her from deciding (if not necessarily making) what lunch item she wants. Therefore, she has free will.

My idea is about like this: In the above situation, she "could" choose one of three sandwiches, but she will choose a ham sandwich because she got sick off turkey last week and the sight of it makes her wretch. So there were really no options except ham. An external factor has influenced her decision. Ergo, she has no free will.

The metaphor seems to favor the first argument because it sounds less ridiculous, but in more abstract terms, I think free will, if you can say the idea has any meaning in the first place, is a moot point because every action you take, even an irrational one, is determined by past experience. So even though you "could" make another choice, or do something else, there is once choice that you will inevitably make because that is what every event leading up to it has caused you to choose. In other words, when I think of choices made under the supposition of free will, they always beg the question, "why that choice?" I find that this question always has an answer, at least a hypothetical one. So could you not attribute the causation of the action to the answer to that question, and not the "choice" of the individual?

So: free will. Do we have it? More importantly, what is it exactly?

 

[Kimarous]

Oh yes, because people absolutely never do things against their better judgement... >_>

 

[dancinginfernal]

I believe the ability of free will was dissipated long ago as civilization advanced. While it seems like we are able to make our own choices, there will always be outlying factors. Moreso in the current age, where drinking, drugs, popularity, upbringing, etc. all have an effect on many choices.

Conceptually, Free Will is everywhere. You can choose to do anything you want. You can break the law if you want to, or obey it. You can have ham, or you can have turkey. You can be kind, or be an ass. In reality there are many factors affecting this, possibly created years ago subconsciously affecting your choices. Upbringing, like childhood friends and family, would be a major factor. Your parents, whose thoughts are affects by their upbringing, slowly forge into your brain, but not intentionally, what's right and what's wrong by what they know. "Which is the good football team", "Such-and-such group of people are dirty thieves", and so on.

Emotions can also play a large part. Say in some video games with moral choices, people that are weak of heart can't stand to kill an innocent who doesn't deserve death while others will relish in it. Some people are just the way they are, and because of this their emotions can get the better of them and affect their judgement in a significant way.

To summarize, no. We do not have free will. And free will itself is something giving you the illusion you have a choice when you definitely do not. The are many outlying factors affecting most if not all decisions you make, it's just difficult to realize such.

Edit: This is probably my largest post ever. Which seems kind of sad.

 

[Kimarous]

Emotions can also play a large part. Say in some video games with moral choices, people that are weak of heart can't stand to kill an innocent who doesn't deserve death while others will relish in it. Some people are just the way they are, and because of this their emotions can get the better of them and affect their judgement in a significant way.

1) What about people who have no qualms either way, who play again and do both?
2) Since when does "not wanting to kill innocents" constitute "weak of heart"?

 

[WayOutThere]

Well, I think you have it right technically but the point is seems trivial. I'm not sure how two worlds, one where we have free will and one where we don't, would be any diffrent. Well, different apart from the following that is:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=scientists-say-free-will-probably-d-2010-04-06

Either way, we are self-aware, thinking things capable of enjoying life.

 

[dancinginfernal]

Emotions can also play a large part. Say in some video games with moral choices, people that are weak of heart can't stand to kill an innocent who doesn't deserve death while others will relish in it. Some people are just the way they are, and because of this their emotions can get the better of them and affect their judgement in a significant way.

1) What about people who have no qualms either way, who play again and do both?
2) Since when does "not wanting to kill innocents" constitute "weak of heart"?

I was merely using it as an example, because it's 2:40 here and I'm a bit low on energy. Otherwise I could have found something much better.

And for the latter question, when I play Knights of the Old Republic at some points it pains me to be a sith because of some of the choices you make. A game is a game though, and people are people.

There are people that have no qualms one way or the other, and they're another kind of person as well. I wasn't restricting it to only the two types of people I had mentioned, I was merely trying to make a point.

 

[2fish]

I believe the ability of free will was dissipated long ago as civilization advanced. While it seems like we are able to make our own choices, there will always be outlying factors. Moreso in the current age, where drinking, drugs, popularity, upbringing, etc. all have an effect on many choices.

Conceptually, Free Will is everywhere. You can choose to do anything you want. You can break the law if you want to, or obey it. You can have ham, or you can have turkey. You can be kind, or be an ass. In reality there are many factors affecting this, possibly created years ago subconsciously affecting your choices. Upbringing, like childhood friends and family, would be a major factor. Your parents, whose thoughts are affects by their upbringing, slowly forge into your brain, but not intentionally, what's right and what's wrong by what they know. "Which is the good football team", "Such-and-such group of people are dirty thieves", and so on.

Emotions can also play a large part. Say in some video games with moral choices, people that are weak of heart can't stand to kill an innocent who doesn't deserve death while others will relish in it. Some people are just the way they are, and because of this their emotions can get the better of them and affect their judgement in a significant way.

To summarize, no. We do not have free will. And free will itself is something giving you the illusion you have a choice when you definitely do not. The are many outlying factors affecting most if not all decisions you make, it's just difficult to realize such.

Edit: This is probably my largest post ever. Which seems kind of sad.

I would say that we have free will, but we do not use it. I would agree that there is an illusion of choices out there. I think we have given into the illusion and use our free will in a very limited environment. You can choose to change your mindset and to no longer play within the "safe" spectrum that people like to live in. All of this can be done without breaking any laws.

The society may say that accumulating items is a way to happiness. You may choose the path untraveled that says I do not find material goods worthy of my money. So while living within any set of rules you forgo some options for the security of those rules. New ideas scare people as does the thought of taking a risk, hence why people do not use freewill to its full extent, it can lead to unknown places and that can be scary to people.

 

[Tallim]

Free Will does, as you say appear to be an illusion. I feel that the main argument for this are all the subconcious decisions we make in life.

These decisions become apparent when engaging in fast paced activities, ie sport or gaming. We react and do things essentially on instinct. A more complex choice is simply the sum of instincts which we do not control.
The body is a machine built to survive, it learns and adjusts these instincts based on things that happen to it. So instincts change which will lead to different people making different choices for the same situation.

To go back to the original example of making a sandwich if you had Bread , Ham and Turkey. Someone with free will would order a take out.

 

[octafish]

I believe in Free Will. Maybe because I'm a closet existentialist. Man is condemned to be free, you can choose to let social mores and morals do the choosing for you, but that itself is a choice. You choose to act in bad faith and have the choices taken away from you and to give away your inherent freedom, and yes that is paradoxical.

 

[PoliceBox63]

Experiments have shown that the action of doing something is faster than the thinking about making that action... So free will is an illusion. An interesting book I would encourage any lovers of science to read is " 13 things that don't make sense" by Michael brookes.
Ever wake up in the morning and you don't want to get up but suddenly you're sitting up in bed when you never decided to? An illusion but not in the sense of some other being is controlling us.

 

[Lullabye]

Free Will as a concept.
Well that's the problem isn't t?
It's just a concept. It's subject to each persons view on the issue.
First, define "free", then "will". get those to concepts down to a T, and the rest should be easier(if only slightly so). As for my two cent's on the actual subject.
Well, isn't whatever I do "free will"? As in, I act out my will, my wants, my needs, whatever the situation.
Eh, no, that's sounds wrong.
I mean.........
damn, this is hard to put into words.
Yes we are restricted, but at the same time are free in a nihilistic sense. "I can do what I can" I think is the term.

 

[Hap2]

No matter what one does, external forces beyond one's control will always have an effect on a person's choices, it is impossible to ever have a case where external forces have absolutely no effect whatsoever. Even if one was trapped inside a dimension of 'nothing', that very same 'nothingness' would become a 'something' to affect one's state of mind and choices.

The only illusion then, is the concept that humans can ever be above external forces affecting them. The fact that there are infinite amount of choices that could produce an infinite amount of results alone, proves that free will exists.

 

[unoleian]

I don't understand how previous experience is an external factor. Any previous experience is no longer an external factor past the present when it has been processed and assimilated into our consciousness. It then becomes an internal factor, just another cog of the greater decision-making machine.

The problem is confusing daily routine with a lack of free will. It's when we actively decide to overstep routine that free will is truly exercised.

It shouldn't be so polar as to think that we ALWAYS exercise free will or that we NEVER exercise free will. This concept of free will existing only without experience would imply that only creatures with no memory or physical embodiment (a non-existent) can truly exercise free will. But then, if you have to not exist to exercise free will, then the simple lack of existence prohibits any potential decision or action you would choose to take. And, therefore, since all action is barred due to non experience and non existence, then no free will can be exercised anyway.

I smell a fallacy in here somewhere...

 

[lack of self CTRL]

I'd like to ask what the alternative to free will is? If we are not the masters of our own destiny then what drives us?

some would say that our actions are governed by behavioural rules drummed into us throughout our lives and reactions to recent events in our lives. In that way human beings are a kin to pool balls, following preditermined paths until they collide or rebound in response to a change in there environment.

If we did not have free will, or at the very least an illusion of free will, could we be having this discussion? and if all we have is an illusion is that enough?

Philip K. Dick explored this idea in his book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" which was the basis of the film "Bladerunner" and in it a group of androids prove that a new psuedo-religion, which had helped to unite a shattered world and saved millions from suicide and generally make everyone feel all cozy and warm, was based on a lie.

So if all we had all along was an illusion of free will, is that enough when it has helped us to acheive so much?

Personally i dont think we will ever answer the question definitely until we live in a society free of resposibility, duty or law.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Free Will is the same thing as World Peace. Completely Non-Existant.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

The human brain is a very clever piece of machinery and sometimes it can do great things for us that make huge changes to our lives. As a result we attach irrational mystical properties to it like free will. It's all very predicable and mechanical that people believe in these things. Proof, if ever we needed it, that free will doesn't exist. Of course you believe in free will as it is just the sort of metaphorical concept that a mechanical human brain would come up with to explain it's functioning without having to understand it's own workings. Without it you are likely to fall into a black hole of self analysis and angst.

 

[YouCallMeNighthawk]

Free will is just making decisions for yourself. It's like in bruce almighty when he tries to make her love him but he can't because it's completely down to her if she wants to.

We do have free will as i could call in sick for work if i wanted to, but i won't because i need money. lol.

 

[Ekonk]

People always do what seems the best or most fun to them at the time. Their will is completely free, it is also sculpted by years of experiences and what their will thinks is best could be something completely different than what you would think.

So yeah, there is free will, but a persons descision is predictable when given his entire life's history, feelings, memories, et cetera et cetera.

 

[RMcD94]

I'm a casual determinism guy, don't believe in free will. Everything has been preordained since the beginning on the universe, unless of course, something outside the universe which doesn't obey causality effected the universe.

It confuses me that people can accept causality then say your brain is independent from it.

 

[Ekonk]

Whilst I believe in free will, I don't believe in freedom. We all have responsabilitys, and we all owe something to someone. So only the worthless and the dead are "free."

That being said,

People always do what seems the best or most fun to them at the time. Their will is completely free, it is also sculpted by years of experiences and what their will thinks is best could be something completely different than what you would think.

So yeah, there is free will, but a person's descision is predictable when given his entire life's history, feelings, memories, et cetera et cetera.

This guy hit the nail on the head.

I thank you, good sir! For... agreeing with me? I dunno. Thanks anyway.