Free Will Is An Illusion

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hangnail said:
If the choice of the soul is completely indeterministic, then it is uncaused and random. (Whether consciousness is material or immaterial is…well…immaterial.)

Merriam-Webster defines “indeterminism” as “a theory that the will is free and that deliberate choice and actions are not determined by or predictable from antecedent causes” or “a theory that holds that not every event has a cause”

If a (temporary) choice or action is not determined by a prior cause, then it qualifies as an “uncaused cause.” A (temporary) uncaused cause is a euphemism for a random or spontaneous event. (God has been traditionally defined as the “uncaused cause.” But God’s act is a nontemporal one; ours is temporal. That’s the difference.)
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Indeterministic events such as those in quantum mechanics are not altogether without cause. I may be wrong in my description but a quantum field would be a necessary cause of such disturbances.

Those disturbances arise in accordance with the very nature of the quantum fields, just as decision-making belongs to the nature of rational agents.
 
hangnail said:
Do you believe free will is compatible with determinism?
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It depends on what you mean by determinism. As mentioned above, the soul and therefore the free will determines what will be chosen. But the example of Buridan’s a**, shows that our choices are not determined precisely by factors external to our human being. In the case of Buridan’s a**, it is predetermined that the a** will choose the food that is closest to him. But being precisely in the middle causes him to starve to death because he cannot freely choose which side to eat. A human however, will freely choose to avoid starvation and can choose either side.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
This issue cannot be resolved without addressing the universal sense that we act freely.

If that is a delusion, why is it a delusion? That question too must be addressed along with the question of whether physical determinism also necessitates psychological determinism.

The question of conscience also must be addressed. Why throughout the animal kingdom, is there apparently only one specie that feels itself obliged to choose between right and wrong, and that ponders the eternal consequences of such a choice?
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Actually, I have a feeling that cats and dogs do have some sense of what is right and what is wrong, at least when it comes to expelling their waste in the house.
 
Tomdstone said:
Actually, I have a feeling that cats and dogs do have some sense of what is right and what is wrong, at least when it comes to expelling their waste in the house.
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instinct and survival, not morality.
 
Extract from the book 'Unseen - New Evidence' by Ron Tesoriero and Lee Han:
To follow the concept of a purely material universe to it’s logical conclusion, says professor John Lennox, pulls the rug out from under the New Atheists. If, as they claim, there is nothing in the universe except matter and energy, some of which blindly and randomly evolved into the human mind, then how can we rely on our minds in the first place to arrive at this conclusion? Our minds are themselves, according to this Darwinian view, mere random purposeless movements of atoms, unable to recognize truth, or beauty, or goodness, to know anything, or to do science for that matter. And yet other scientists of undisputed intellectual stature with diametrically opposed views concur that, ‘The reason why what is in my little mind can understand a bit of what is out there is because both of them are traceable back to the same grand designer.’
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C.S. Lewis:
“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.”

“The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words true or false.”
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I hope this has helped, I doubt it will though, as I believe many will believe just about anything so long as it’s not Christ, so long as it doesn’t mention their consciences.

Thank you for reading
Josh
 
Tomdstone said:
Actually, I have a feeling that cats and dogs do have some sense of what is right and what is wrong, at least when it comes to expelling their waste in the house.
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All animals acquire a conditioned reflex. When cats and dogs mess the house, they anticipate consequences based on past experience. That doesn’t mean they have a concept of good and evil as our conscience provides us. It’s doubtful they have a notion of eternal consequences in the next life. It’s even very doubtful they have any notion of a next life … notwithstanding cats have nine lives, they are still done forever at the bottom of the 9th. 😉
 
ThinkingSapien said:
Sounds like something Hitchens once said. I believe he was asked if he believed he had free will and his reply was something like “I have no choice but to believe so.” 🙂
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There’s a paradox in there somewhere. 😃
 
ivebeenshown said:
Perhaps indeterminism isn’t about randomness or chance at all. Perhaps the indeterministic elements of reality are all exhibits of the free will of rational agents, while chance is the illusion. Even if that is not the case, though, it is unwise to equate unpredictability with randomness across the board.
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Indeterminism implies randomness by definition.
 
Tomdstone said:
There is a certain amount of randomness in our choices which are determined internally by our free will.
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I would accept the argument that our decision-making process or mental activity exhibits a certain amount of randomness or spontaneity that is beyond our control. In fact, I have already furnished this thread with a model that explains how this might work. It’s called the “two stage model of free will.”
Tomdstone said:
So your logic denying free will is missing some important ingredients and therefore is leading you to a false conclusion based on an erroneous simplification of the question.
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I am the only one here who has actually provided a model of how (libertarian) free will might work. However, for such a model to work, it must invoke some element of randomness - a randomness that is ultimately beyond our control.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
But if you are a theist, and in particular a Judeo-Christian theist, you have no choice but to believe in free will since God holds us accountable with rewards and punishments for our choices.
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This is simply not true. Theological determinism in present in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (all three of the Abrahamic religions). In fact, the New Testament itself clearly teaches predestination.

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Romans 8:29
Charlemagne_III said:
If free will is an illusion, why does the entire human race seem to hold each other accountable for the exercise of free will? You will not find in any culture the delusion that good acts need not be rewarded and bad acts need not be punished because nobody can help acting the way they do.
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This does not presuppose free will. Rewards and punishments.are DETERMINANT factors of behavior. (If a “robot” is not behaving properly, what do you do? You fix the problem by attempting to reprogram it. That’s how you CORRECT its misbehavior. In fact, our penology is now known as “corrections.”)

At any rate, you did not actually address the argument I presented in the original post of this thread.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
False analogy.

Free will is not in our dreams. We do things in our dreams we would never dream of doing in reality.
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I argued that free will is a real illusion even like a dream is a real illusion. So, my analogy was more than apt.
 
hangnail said:
I argued that free will is a real illusion even like a dream is a real illusion. So, my analogy was more than apt.
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Can you prove that solipsism is wrong and that the real world is not an illusion?
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
I think that argument ultimately leads to my question. If everything is random or pre-determined, it means that there is no free will, and if there is no free will, there can be no personal responsibility for anything we do in our lives.
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Yes. That’s the argument.
“Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.” - Sam Harris
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ChainBreaker said:
Or they are a product of my will, and my will is not a product of chance or deterministic physical events; but that does not leave much space for metaphysical naturalism and we can’t have that now can we.

So yes, according to the dogma of metaphysical naturalism I do not have freewill; in fact I do not even have the freedom to reason let alone understand your argument.
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Materialism is not the only form of determinism. In fact, theological determinism is present in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

(To my knowledge, Sam Harris is not a materialist. In fact, he an advocate of spirituality/mysticism.)
 
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