Does this show that free will doesn't exist?

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Ben_Sinner

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  1. Cause always precedes effect.
  2. A person cannot be conscious of a thought before they think it.
  3. Therefore, consciousness cannot cause thought.
  4. The person can’t consciously determine what they will think about.
  5. They don’t have free will.
Can somebody refute this?
 
It doesn’t seem like a coherent argument. Can you reconstruct it in a more coherent way? It seems like you are jumping to conclusions without a clear line of reasoning.
 
The whole argument about free will boils down to whether God predestines us for heaven or hell, when it’s all said and done, or whether we have some say in it.

We seem to have conflicting statements in the Bible -

Romans 9:15 NIV
"For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
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This implies the deliberate salvation of some.

The obvious obverse of that statement, reading between the lines, is “I will not have mercy on whom I will not have mercy, and I will not have compassion on whom I will not have mercy.” This implies the deliberate damnation of some.

But then we’ve got the other side of the story -

1 Timothy 2:3 NIV
“This is good, and pleases God our Saviour, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
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This implies God wants none to perish, and both of these conflicting statements were penned by St. Paul.

Now this has a personal import for me. I’ve often stated that the night my own father died, he appeared in my room. During the ensuing conversation, he blurted out at one point, “I always was doomed! I didn’t really have any choice!” But later in the same event, he said “I was WILLING!” (to act in a way that doomed him).

And I don’t have any doubt he was doomed. I still remember the terrifying scream just before he disappeared again, and it was obvious something was coming for him.

I accept the maxim “God is love”, but I have a lot of trouble reconciling that statement with my father’s comment about always being doomed, viz. “I will have mercy etc.”

However his own free will came into it, as he clearly stated. He had a deliberate policy of setting out for 20 years to destroy my confidence, and treated his own family like a little tyrant. God didn’t make him do it, so it was his own choice.

If we use a human family as some sort of pointer, then ***good parents ***would want the best for their children - good health, good upbringing, and most of all, the ability to make good and right choices.

But despite the most favourable of family backgrounds, some children destroy themselves with bad relationships, bad choices, bad habits eg. taking drugs, gang membership and so on.

And quite often the parents can only watch broken hearted knowing full well what the probable outcome is going to be. Their will is that their children be “saved” so to speak, but the fact is that some of their children may well destroy themselves, by their own choice.

My old pastor told a story about a man he knew who’s son destroyed himself with such choices. And as the father (a quite distinguished looking man in the pastor’s words) looked down on his son lying in state in the coffin, the pastor heard him say something along the lines of “Well, son, you either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do the right thing!”.

It’s still a mystery, but I think God’s in the position of a tormented parent who must often watch HIs children destroy themselves and others, and who “takes no delight in the death of the wicked.” That’s why He lets the devil be the “minister of His wrath” to quote John Calvin - God doesn’t want the job, so He lets the devil do it.

We’ve got free will (up to a point), but God knows what we’ll do with it. In that sense we may always be either one of those on whom He will have compassion, or one of those who will suffer His condemnation.

Any hypothetical dabbling in philosophical issues that doesn’t take our ultimate fates into account is just that - dabbling.
 
Free-will is to a great extent a mirage.

But that doesn’t matter. What matters is how we use the freedom that it seems we have.

ICXC NIKA
 
I’m sure there are some theoretical physicists that could talk about effects preceeding causes. I’m not one of them so I’ll let that lie.

It seems to me that thoughts can and are causes by the subconscious. And the unconscious if dreams are thought. Tbought can be causes by physical stimuli too. Pain induced thought. Smell is particularly powerful in evoking thought and long-forgotten memories. A thought, it seems, can be the cause of a thought. So we can be consciously thinking and generating new thoughts as we do so.

I think these counterexamples through serious doubt over your premises
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Cause always precedes effect.
  2. A person cannot be conscious of a thought before they think it.
  3. Therefore, consciousness cannot cause thought.
  4. The person can’t consciously determine what they will think about.
  5. They don’t have free will.
Can somebody refute this?
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I am guessing that this may lead to blame apportionment?

Does one need absolute freewill in order to make the appropriate choice? I think not. Our minds are a product of our environment. However we are not automatons. We do not respond in a direct cause/effect manner for every decision. We always have the chance to reconsider, re-evaluate our actions, decisions, thoughts etc. Whatever we have been given, our merit/demerit depends qualitatively on what we have been given. Hence, the definition of mortal sin always have a subjective clause in it to determine the knowledge and severity of the sin. Nevertheless, we do not need to worry all this because the Divine Judge has all the information to determine the degree of culpability. Mere mortals shouldn’t worry too much about this.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Cause always precedes effect.
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No, cause does not always precede effect in time…that is a false statement. Many times cause and effect are concurrent in time…and cause only “precedes” in the sense that it is necessary for the effect.
 
The argument is bogus because thinking is the process that we use to reach a decision. Therefore thinking caused the decision. A thought is known in the consciousness from the moment it is thought such that consciousness of it and the thought are concurrent. There is no before and after. Not only that, but we are still conscious without even thinking a thought. Unless you want to claim we are unconscious? Suffice to say there is more to thinking and consciousness than what you are letting on in this question. Your argument could lead to all sorts of insane conclusions like we are not even thinking at all, because after all we can not determine our thoughts. Well if that were true then what are we doing now?
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. A person cannot be conscious of a thought before they think it.
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Not true. Shakespeare could have an idea in his head for a play without the details and the minutia that did not materialize until pen was put to paper. He could certainly have been conscious of events before they were truly formed in his mind. Mozart was well known for simply sitting down and writing out musical scores from the well spring of his mind. Even Bob Dylan wrote Blowin’ In The Wind in 10 minutes, simply sitting down and writing it out. While one may not be conscious of a thought, the information bouncing around in the brain is already there and waiting to form things into a concrete conscious idea. We all have a “ah ha” moment when things click in the mind and we suddenly understand.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Therefore, consciousness cannot cause thought.
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Unconsciousness can certainly cause thought. How many people have created things based on experiences in dreams? Paul McCartney dreamed the melody of Yesterday, woke up and figured it out on a piano. If consciousness cannot cause thought, how is it that for some unconsciousness CAN cause thought?
 
OK. Thank you for the responses. I saw this argument on an older post on here and wasn’t sure how to refute it.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Cause always precedes effect.
  2. A person cannot be conscious of a thought before they think it.
  3. Therefore, consciousness cannot cause thought.
  4. The person can’t consciously determine what they will think about.
  5. They don’t have free will.
Can somebody refute this?
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You don’t need (1).

That is true that subconscious mind process information and produce knowledge/thought. The knowledge is a form which is comprehensible for consciousness. Consciousness then can give final vote on whether it accepts the knowledge or not. In first case we proceed and in second case subconsciousness keep processing again to produce another thought. There is however a valid question here which questions whether consciousness has any contribution on performance of a being.

Moreover, that is true that consciousness can not produce thoughts but we can make conscious decision. So the fact that we cannot think consciously does not mean that we cannot we cannot decide consciously. We can also make subconscious decision for routine tasks.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Cause always precedes effect.
  2. A person cannot be conscious of a thought before they think it.
  3. Therefore, consciousness cannot cause thought.
  4. The person can’t consciously determine what they will think about.
  5. They don’t have free will.
Can somebody refute this?
Click to expand...
Will is not in consciousness, but in the soul, in the intellect.
Consciousness becomes “aware” of a choice “after the fact”, when suddenly it pops into consciousness that: “I am going to drive virtuously from now on”. Consciousness in an instant becomes aware of a resolved / deliberated will. It is quite surprising when a choice pops up, and you consciously know in that instant that you will be moving to do that choice (or refraining from doing).
Evaluation of what could be done does happen consciously, as well as conclusions about whether the doing would be successful or not, difficult or easy, etc. But in the midst of that evaluation or following it, suddenly conscious thought realizes out of the blue, “I am indeed really going to do this”. There is a kind of “love” of the thought of the conclusion (a kind of wish that the conclusion were not just in the thought of the conclusion, but that it was actually the reality), and out of that love comes the thought, “I am doing this.” And also the physical movements to then accomplish the reality.

As far as choosing what to think about, St Paul calls on his “brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
He is telling them, consciously evaluate what might be good to think about, until you reach a conclusion of what to think about, and you will find it pop into your head, “I am going to think virtuously about…” The choice is in your soul, but it manifests instantaneously as a resolute, resolved, determinate statement of what you are now embarking on to do.

You cannot consciously manipulate your will, you can only provide it with evaluations and conclusions that it will either love (and choose) or not love (and choose “not to do”),
 
STT said:
I think it would be kind of you to cite the source.
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It was just a comment from a poster on here from a past thread. I’m not sure if they would want to be singled out or not.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
  1. Cause always precedes effect.
  2. A person cannot be conscious of a thought before they think it.
  3. Therefore, consciousness cannot cause thought.
  4. The person can’t consciously determine what they will think about.
  5. They don’t have free will.
Can somebody refute this?
Click to expand...
In my experience, I can will to think or not to think. I can also will to think about some particular thing or some other particularly thing. In my experience, I have free will.

You also need to consider here that the intellect and will are distinct powers of the soul. The act of the intellect is to think or thought or understand, this is what the intellect is for. In fact, the object of the intellect is truth. So in talking about the intellect, we can either talk about the power itself or its act; and the same goes for the will. Also, the will moves the intellect and the intellect moves the will but in different ways. For the intellect moves the will as an end moves an agent and the will moves the intellect as an efficient or agent cause. The consciousness you seem to be referring to here is nothing more than the act of the intellect. We cannot think unless we will to think; in this sense the will is the first mover as an agent cause of all the soul’s powers including the intellect. However as I said, the intellect moves the will as an end moves an agent for every agent acts for an end and it is the intellect that perceives the end. The acts of the will and intellect reciprocate on each other.
 
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