Experiment- Do you have free will?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Qoeleth
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Q

Qoeleth

Guest
Is free will an illusion?

To test this, I proposed a simple experiment to myself- on a given day, I would do things differently- sleep in, have tea at breakfast instead of coffee, do some things I normally wouldn’t do, make other random variations in the day.

But it turned out I ended up doing everything actually as I always do. So, it seems as if I do not have free will- that my body and brain are basically just working out of causality, or following through Divine Will.

Anyone might like to try the same experiment, and I wager the same result will emerge. Pick a random, incongruous act, and see if you can do it…Like read a book you are not at all interested in, or order a food you hate at a restaurant, or stand up on a train and say something foolish out loud…It can’t be done. Our body and brain just follow the train track there are in.

It seems are deeds are already written in God’s Book of Life, and we just read the pages. But maybe this is a good thing…
 
I dunno what you been smoking.
I choose to do what I please each day. Sometimes I have coffee, sometimes tea, I get books out of the library and sometimes choose different kinds to try to improve my mind. Today after work I chose to say a rosary, dig up dandelions, walk the dog, take out the trash, and not to wash the windows because I ran out of time.
Right now I’m choosing to hang out on the forums when I should be going to bed, but it’s my choice.
I firmly believe free will is not an illusion.
Maybe you’re just in too much of a rut, or habitual mode of living.
I’m sure you can change your habits if you decide to.
God bless.
 
They can all be done once you have convictions where these behaviors come as results to your convictions or when you are obliged to do what you don’t like to do so you could survive and live.
Your mind and beliefs are powerful and they can have control over your behaviors, it may be hard at first but then you can keep trying and you’ll succeed.

But Pascal’s wager is about convictions when you don’t have, that’s sort of impossible to do, and if you can do it somehow, in your inner conviction it would still be unacceptable and unreal to you.
 
I think what you have been doing is free will not an illusion. You are conscious of what you are going to do and you act upon it freely with a full awareness of what you are doing.
You can choose what you want to do, doing something that you wouldn’t want do. That is not experiment but that is free will.
It is a choice of acting which involves knowing what is to be done. Every person has a free will. Let me give you a concrete example; If a priest choose to sin like killing people using his tactical skills which are rooted in his knowledge of sorcery, that is a free will. However he could have avoid doing it by using the same free will. This example is real as I know such a priest who have been using his free will against the will of God in our Diocese and the Bishop has been sleeping in taking it as if it is a venial sin. I cannot understand why the Bishop is naive to the situation.
On the other hand I use my free will to fight against all demons by praying, destroying gods or demons shrines and preaching to people wherever I go in the Diocese to love Jesus Christ alone and to repent from their deformed faith as some people have their own gods.
I hope I contribute to your understanding about free will.
 
Or you could decide everything on the flip of a coin; heads coffee, tails tea. You’ve used your free will not to chose anything but to let chance decide.
 
While for most of us ‘free-will’ does have degrees of constraints, and there are some mentally ‘ill’ folks who seem to have no ‘free-will’ in certain areas or in completeness; there is a growing body of thinking and experiment in neuroscience that leans towards free-will having a reality.

See the article in New Scientist dated 23 September 2009 by Anil Ananthaswamy titled ‘Free will is not an illusion after all’.
 
I just slapped myself very hard in the face and proved your point wrong.
 
Paddy_Walker said:
Or you could decide everything on the flip of a coin; heads coffee, tails tea. You’ve used your free will not to chose anything but to let chance decide.
Click to expand...
Yes. But could anyone actually do it in practice? For example, if you said, “I’ll live by chance”, and you flipped a coin which said you should have tea. But actually, you want coffee, so you disregard the flip of the coin.

Could a person actually carry out a resolve to live by chance? I doubt it. There seems to be a deep psychological mechanism which would reject it.

It reminds me of the character in the Batman comics, Two-Face, who flips a coin to decide if he should be good or bad. Or Sophocles, “Our lives are ruled by chance, so the best thing is to live at random.”
 
Qoeleth said:
Yes. But could anyone actually do it in practice? For example, if you said, “I’ll live by chance”, and you flipped a coin which said you should have tea. But actually, you want coffee, so you disregard the flip of the coin.

Could a person actually carry out a resolve to live by chance? I doubt it. There seems to be a deep psychological mechanism which would reject it.

It reminds me of the character in the Batman comics, Two-Face, who flips a coin to decide if he should be good or bad. Or Sophocles, “Our lives are ruled by chance, so the best thing is to live at random.”
Click to expand...
I only have to do it once to disprove the theory, so I’ll choose something easy next time I think of it.
 
Or, I just thought, you could be drafted into the military and lose any choice in what you want to do. Disproving that what you choose is predetermined, or that you cannot do something that you don’t want to do.
 
Qoeleth said:
Yes. But could anyone actually do it in practice? For example, if you said, “I’ll live by chance”, and you flipped a coin which said you should have tea. But actually, you want coffee, so you disregard the flip of the coin.

Could a person actually carry out a resolve to live by chance? I doubt it. There seems to be a deep psychological mechanism which would reject it.

It reminds me of the character in the Batman comics, Two-Face, who flips a coin to decide if he should be good or bad. Or Sophocles, “Our lives are ruled by chance, so the best thing is to live at random.”
Click to expand...
I don’t know about trying to live by pure chance, but examples of deliberate, ongoing “contrariness” exist.

It’s been related, in historical records, that many Plains Indian tribes had “holy” individuals that Europeans called the “contraries,” men who self-consciously made it a point to do everything “backwards.” Unlike the clown figures of these nations’ religious rituals, these people made a continuing lifestyle of it with a Pharisaical level of devotion.

Of course, one could contend that these people may have eventually “adjusted” to doing things this way, and say that they were thus no longer being “contrary.”

I wonder if any ever decided to adopt Two-Face’s coin-flip strategy?
 
Sometimes deeply entrenched habits need the force of strong motivation for change to happen, but the opportunity is always there. We do indeed have free will, the ability to choose one thing or another.

Take your coffee or tea example. Let’s say you were scheduled for surgery, and were told you had to fast for 12 hours prior (which recently happened to me). That means neither coffee nor tea. Are you saying you could not do it? Normally, I never do without my morning cup of joe, but I certainly have and will when there is a good reason. No one held me down and forced the decision on me either. I was told it was important for the successful outcome of the procedure, so I used my free will to make to choice and change my usual habit (for that one day!).
 
Prodigal_Son said:
I just slapped myself very hard in the face and proved your point wrong.
Click to expand...
👍
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

In reality OP, you chose not to do the things you listed just as you chose to engage in this experiment. You’re decision not to sleep in, or not to have tea in bed is just as much an indicator of free will as had you done them. … well. maybe not your decision not to sleep in, your body does operate in sleep routines, so that one generally isn’t in your control. The tea one, however, is completely within your ability to control, therefore, by choosing not to take tea, you enacted your free will.
 
You are thinking of free will too strictly, that all decisions are made external to any influence, but our will can be influenced by external factors and internal desires. The weather outside can influence what clothes we decide to wear, how someone interacts with us can influence the decision on how we interact back to them.

Adam and Eve were influenced by the serpent. We have choices everyday. I once decided to take a long way home to stop to see an old friend. I had been thinking about them earlier that day and wanted to check up on them. I was influenced by my internal desire to care for my friends, but it was still my choice.
 
Qoeleth said:
But it turned out I ended up doing everything actually as I always do. So, it seems as if I do not have free will-
Click to expand...
You may be a person of habit. That doesn’t negate or corroborate the hypothesis that you don’t have a specific type of free will though.
Qoeleth said:
Like read a book you are not at all interested in, or order a food you hate at a restaurant, or stand up on a train and say something foolish out loud…**It can’t be done. **
Click to expand...
It can be done.

**Uninteresting books **- been there, done that. Was a regular exercise in elementary, middle, high school, college, and grad school (not all of the course work was interesting) and must occasionally do so occupationally.

Order food you hate - There are people that eat food they hate (myself included) all the time because of perceived health benefits.

Say something foolish out loud on a train - easily done and not a big deal. There are a lot of homeless people thought to be mentally ill that do this. It seems to have desensitized others as it’s usually ignored.
Qoeleth said:
Our body and brain just follow the train track there are in.
Click to expand...
See also: procedural memory
 
I actually have done similar things with myself, with the only difference that I have been able to do it. In fact, I have made some radical changes in my life that for most people those changes are practically impossible to do. Remember free will is nothing but the ability of make conscious decisions in our everyday life. Your so called failure has to do with the fact that your decision or free will was to do the same thing again, inside of tou, you didn’t want to make a change and just didn’t do it. No it wasn’t that God didn’t want, you didn’t want and you exercised your free will by not doing.

Now with regard to habits, changing habits is not easy and required a very conscious and determined decision. To that you have to add that society sells us the idea that we are helpless victims of our pleasures and that we must over indulge ourselves, therefore when many people see that a change requires work they just become lazy and don’t do it. Is like taking the easy road, changing a habit seems like too much work for many so they take the easy way decide not to change and keep with the same.pattern. however, changing habits is perfectly doable if you are willing to put the effort and work on it.
 
ThinkingSapien said:
You may be a person of habit. That doesn’t negate or corroborate the hypothesis that you don’t have a specific type of free will though.

It can be done.

Order food you hate - There are people that eat food they hate (myself included) all the time because of perceived health benefits.

See also: procedural memory
Click to expand...
I did the food one quite successfully. I had a terrible diet and I used to hate vegetables. I made a conscious decision to change my diet, stop eating junk, candy and bad food and start a healthy diet with vegetables. The first few days I changed my diet I threw up after having spinach and broccoli because I hate it too much but I was decided to not go back to junk food. After a few days with lots of discomfort I was able to start eating better foods with no problems. Now a days I don’t know how I used to like so much sugar as I can’t stand it anymore. Still I don’t like spinach but I eat it anyway. If you have the will to do and God you can do it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top