Free will?

[grannymh]

I know you like discussing the soul , but it doesn’t help provide a solution here. If it did, philosophers would have stopped arguing about free will long ago, but far from it.

To the Catholic Encyclopedia it is very much an open (and complex) problem - "The question of free will, moral liberty, …] ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics, and psychology. "

As the Stanfield Encyclopedia of Philosophy says “And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millennia”.

Of course the spiritual soul provides a solution.

Just because philosophers continue in the footprints of Descartes does not alter the spiritual aspects of free will. Just because a philosophical position claims that God is dead does not alter human nature…nor did it destroy God.

I do understand that thinking about free will and a rational intellect as being attributes of a spiritual soul is scary. So I will cease.

 

[inocente]

Of course the spiritual soul provides a solution.

Just because philosophers continue in the footprints of Descartes does not alter the spiritual aspects of free will. Just because a philosophical position claims that God is dead does not alter human nature…nor did it destroy God.

I do understand that thinking about free will and a rational intellect as being attributes of a spiritual soul is scary. So I will cease.

Yes, it can be scary to really think about stuff rather than just accept whatever we’re told.

You seem to be saying that by definition whatever you say is correct and so anyone who disagrees is wrong, and this proves we have free will. There may just be a bijou problemette with that logic …

 

[shoe]

In my philosophy class we were dicussing whether or not we have free will.

I believe we don’t have free will. If you think about it for a while and understand the meaning of free will, it is a decission that is made between 2 or more objects or anything else without any prior influences.

I believe that we live under the laws of determinism. Which means that a decission was made based on prior actions.

I can give some examples if needed. I just want to put this out there.

If determinism were true, then mankind simply would not have the ability to make decisions based on their common sense or logical conclusions; and if free will were non-existent, then free will could not be open for discussion. Mankind would have to believe that some kind of force, separate from all reason and logic, had pre-determined everything that he or she said and did. Logic, reason, and philosophy forums would be either non-existent or would not matter. And if determinism were true, and if free will were false, who would know about it in the first place? But since we do know about determinism and free will, and can choose whether or not to have fun debating between them on CAF, we can conclude that determinism is false and has no power over free will.

 

[inocente]

If determinism were true, then mankind simply would not have the ability to make decisions based on their common sense or logical conclusions; and if free will were non-existent, then free will could not be open for discussion.

But computers make logical decisions just fine and few would say they have free will.

Mankind would have to believe that some kind of force, separate from all reason and logic, had pre-determined everything that he or she said and did. Logic, reason, and philosophy forums would be either non-existent or would not matter. And if determinism were true, and if free will were false, who would know about it in the first place? But since we do know about determinism and free will, and can choose whether or not to have fun debating between them on CAF, we can conclude that determinism is false and has no power over free will.

After thousands of years of philosophers arguing about whether free will exists, it might just be a bit optimistic to think you’re the first person in history to solve it.

My own view is if we got rid of that ridiculous First Cause argument, which says that somehow the universe is clockwork and everything is preordained by fate, which is stunningly silly, then we wouldn’t need any free will arguments either, and we’d all be way better off.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

In my philosophy class we were dicussing whether or not we have free will.

I believe we don’t have free will. If you think about it for a while and understand the meaning of free will, it is a decission that is made between 2 or more objects or anything else without any prior influences.

I believe that we live under the laws of determinism. Which means that a decission was made based on prior actions.

I can give some examples if needed. I just want to put this out there.

You can’t be a practicing Catholic and hold those views. These views are heretical. They are not only contrary to Catholic Faith but are opposed to the teachings of Scripture. Read and study and meditate on your Catechism.

 

[schnipdip]

To be taught that good is bad and bad is good is done by ignorant/bad parents.
But there comes a time when the “not so young” child sees/hears differently.
Then he makes a decision whether to continue or to change what they have been taught.

Animals do not have a decision to make because they will always follow what their master
taught them, like Pavlov’s dog. We may be trained as well. But we can also change our
behavior and people have done so.

Just a thought.

That is true, but the moral values are still there. You may not even recognize it, but they will have an influence on your decisions.
Even now, I am old enough to make my own decisions, but I still think to myself “what will my parents say?” That in turn influences my decision.

 

[schnipdip]

You can’t be a practicing Catholic and hold those views. These views are heretical. They are not only contrary to Catholic Faith but are opposed to the teachings of Scripture. Read and study and meditate on your Catechism.

Right, but I may not be a practicing Catholic, but I still believe in God and Jesus and his teachings. Therefore I am a Christian.

And even so, people make decisions off of what the Bible teaches. For instance you shall not kill. Well, I bet the thought has crossed your mind at some point to kill another person. You would be lying if you said it didn’t. I bet that that commandment had some influence on your decision. You could have thought “Well, if I kill someone then I will go to hell.” Then you didn’t have free will because it was determined that you weren’t going to kill the person because you didn’t want to go to hell because the Bible said you will go to hell if you kill someone. You had the choice, but you weren’t going to. Your decision was based off of that commandment and not going to hell.

If the Bible said “YES! Killing is fine! It is morally wrong though.” Not know the consequences just that, your decision might have been different. So know you have the thought that killing is fine because the Bible says it’s fine. So you might have been inclined to kill that person and maybe not even given it a second thought.

 

[Giants]

It’s pretty much been confirmed that free will is an illusion, based on neuro-scientific findings. You can argue against it philosophically, as well.

 

[prodigalson2011]

It’s pretty much been confirmed that free will is an illusion, based on neuro-scientific findings. You can argue against it philosophically, as well.

The studies that “refute” free will are laughably weak. Oddly, neuroscience seems to be the one area of science where the principle of “correlation does not equal causation” doesn’t apply. Because certain brain activity precedes certain actions, the decision to make that action is an illusion? And we go about proving the brain activity wasn’t influenced by an independent mind how? By measuring the delay between choice as seen in brain activity versus physical expression of said choice by the subject? But since the brain controls the body, wouldn’t the one necessarily precede the other either way? It’s crackpot science that doesn’t even halfway make sense. Somewhere along the way, scientists started thinking they were philosophers and logicians, but a staggering number of them are embarrassingly incompetent in these areas.

 

[inocente]

You can’t be a practicing Catholic and hold those views. These views are heretical. They are not only contrary to Catholic Faith but are opposed to the teachings of Scripture. Read and study and meditate on your Catechism.

You’re saying that in your view a Catholic must believe she has free will but must on no account use her free will. Which implies that Catholicism is a mind-control cult. God giveth free fill and the Church taketh it away.

Please explain that novel idea to us non-Catholics, citing the official document on www.vatican.va which lays out that rule.

 

[inocente]

The studies that “refute” free will are laughably weak. Oddly, neuroscience seems to be the one area of science where the principle of “correlation does not equal causation” doesn’t apply. Because certain brain activity precedes certain actions, the decision to make that action is an illusion? And we go about proving the brain activity wasn’t influenced by an independent mind how? By measuring the delay between choice as seen in brain activity versus physical expression of said choice by the subject? But since the brain controls the body, wouldn’t the one necessarily precede the other either way? It’s crackpot science that doesn’t even halfway make sense. Somewhere along the way, scientists started thinking they were philosophers and logicians, but a staggering number of them are embarrassingly incompetent in these areas.

By all means do the standard CAF posters’ rant against science, but before accusing highly educated intelligent people of making crackpot claims, it’s worth stopping to wonder if you misunderstood what they’re actually saying.

Experiments appear to show that subjects act on a decision before being consciously aware of the decision.

One significant finding of modern studies is that a person’s brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Researchers have found delays of about half a second (discussed in sections below). With contemporary brain scanning technology, other scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

Some scientists have questioned the protocols of these experiments and so currently the results are controversial, but future experiments should overcome the teething problems. Currently the jury’s out.

 

[prodigalson2011]

By all means do the standard CAF posters’ rant against science, but before accusing highly educated intelligent people of making crackpot claims, it’s worth stopping to wonder if you misunderstood what they’re actually saying.

Experiments appear to show that subjects act on a decision before being consciously aware of the decision.

One significant finding of modern studies is that a person’s brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Researchers have found delays of about half a second (discussed in sections below). With contemporary brain scanning technology, other scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

Some scientists have questioned the protocols of these experiments and so currently the results are controversial, but future experiments should overcome the teething problems. Currently the jury’s out.

For a Christian, you seem awfully eager to prove yourself an automaton. 60% accuracy on a heads or tails proposition is, as I said, WEAK. Blind guesswork could turn up the same results. And other studies are even weaker.

The options were always two buttons, and nothing hinged on which was pressed. Soon and coauthors write: “We found that two brain regions encoded with high accuracy whether the subject was about to choose the left or right response prior to the conscious decision,” noting that “the predictive neural information … preceded the conscious motor decision by up to 10 seconds.” The science writer Elsa Youngsteadt represented these results as suggesting that “the unconscious brain calls the shots, making free will an illusory afterthought.”

In this study, however, the predictions are accurate only 60 percent of the time. Using a coin, I can predict with 50-percent accuracy which button a participant will press next. And if the person agrees not to press a button for a minute (or an hour), I can make my predictions a minute (or an hour) in advance. I come out 10 points worse in accuracy, but I win big in terms of time.

So what is indicated by the neural activity that Soon and colleagues measured? My money is on a slight unconscious bias toward a particular button—a bias that may give the participant about a 60-percent chance of pressing that button next.

Given such flimsy evidence, I do not recommend betting the farm on the nonexistence of free will.

chronicle.com/article/Alfred-R-Mele-The-Case/131166/

 

[inocente]

For a Christian, you seem awfully eager to prove yourself an automaton. 60% accuracy on a heads or tails proposition is, as I said, WEAK. Blind guesswork could turn up the same results. And other studies are even weaker.

You have the ad hominem fallacy down to a T . First it was scientists don’t know what they’re talking about because they don’t call themselves philosophers, now all True Christians™ must believe whatever you happen to believe.

It remains that arguing has never once changed the truth and as I said, currently the jury is out on the evidence.

 

[Trurl]

Experiments appear to show that subjects act on a decision before being consciously aware of the decision.

Such experiments have been conducted while observing the eye-movements of chess players. The movement was detected by a narrow infrared beam which reflected from the eye. As the player contemplated a move, the eye movements concentrated on a specific part of the board, as the player “tried” out the ramification of a move. Then the eye went and concentrated on another piece, and the ramifications of its possible moves. Now, so far there is nothing surprising.

Then came a very rapid eye movement, concentrating on a special part of the board, - RIGHT BEFORE the “Eureka” moment - right before the player realized what the “best move” will be! The subconscious “worked out” the details of the best move, BEFORE the player was aware of it. Of course that does not disprove the existence of “free will”, but it does disprove that the “will” must be conscious, and it shows that the brain is much more complicated than it was previously thought. Only a small portion of our thinking process happens in the conscious area. I experienced this phenomenon many years ago, when I played a lot of chess, and created and solved many chess problems. One morning I woke up with a very nice chess problem in my mind. I did not have to sit down and solve it… I already had the solution. All that was done in the subconscious.

Of course this looks like a “threat” to those, who probably still feel uncomfortable with the idea that Aristotele was wrong, and have problems with realizing that the brain is more than a cooling organ for the blood, or a simple “conduit” which is somehow coupled to the “soul”.

 

[prodigalson2011]

You have the ad hominem fallacy down to a T . First it was scientists don’t know what they’re talking about because they don’t call themselves philosophers, now all True Christians™ must believe whatever you happen to believe.

It remains that arguing has never once changed the truth and as I said, currently the jury is out on the evidence.

You have the misunderstanding of an ad hominem down to a T. My remark about the inconsistency of your Christianity and embrace of free will denial were a standalone statement, not part of my argument. And, yes, all Christians must believe in free will. Free will is a necessary condition for moral responsibility, and moral responsibility is essential to Christianity. I suppose you’d be just as insulted if I said all Christians must believe in God.

And that’s a gross misunderstanding and/ or distortion of my remark on scientists. I said that they are attempting to draw philosophical deductions from scientific observations and in many cases they are not very good at it. Science finds data, it does not make metaphysical declarations. It’s a simple case of jurisdiction.

 

[prodigalson2011]

Such experiments have been conducted while observing the eye-movements of chess players. The movement was detected by a narrow infrared beam which reflected from the eye. As the player contemplated a move, the eye movements concentrated on a specific part of the board, as the player “tried” out the ramification of a move. Then the eye went and concentrated on another piece, and the ramifications of its possible moves. Now, so far there is nothing surprising.

Then came a very rapid eye movement, concentrating on a special part of the board, - RIGHT BEFORE the “Eureka” moment - right before the player realized what the “best move” will be! The subconscious “worked out” the details of the best move, BEFORE the player was aware of it. Of course that does not disprove the existence of “free will”, but it does disprove that the “will” must be conscious, and it shows that the brain is much more complicated than it was previously thought. Only a small portion of our thinking process happens in the conscious area. I experienced this phenomenon many years ago, when I played a lot of chess, and created and solved many chess problems. One morning I woke up with a very nice chess problem in my mind. I did not have to sit down and solve it… I already had the solution. All that was done in the subconscious.

Of course this looks like a “threat” to those, who probably still feel uncomfortable with the idea that Aristotele was wrong, and have problems with realizing that the brain is more than a cooling organ for the blood, or a simple “conduit” which is somehow coupled to the “soul”.

Analysis/problem solving and will are not the same thing.

For example, the chess player could find the right move and then, for some reason–pity for his opponent, make the game more interesting, etc–deliberately make the wrong move.

Simply put, this study has absolutely nothing to do with free will.

And I don’t know anybody who thinks that about the brain. Talk about a strawman.

 

[Bill_7154]

Right but that that decision was made off of prior actions and not your own free will.

And you see that all the time, in almost all decisions that are made, you just don’t realize it.

I say maybe, maybe not. How can you PROVE this via the scientific method?

 

[Bill_7154]

You are right here, but you also have to remember that your parents play a huge role in your actions. You can see, and I have seen that children mimik their parents. So yes we are an extension of our parents.
And yes you could say that you are not to blame because it was determined that you were going to do that.

I grew up severely abused and neglected. I am not, nor have I ever been in prison or beaten someone. Most ppl who grew up like me wind up in prison, beat people, etc.

How can you say for certain there was something in my family that lead me to change, and not a desire within me? Or I came across the idea somewhere…and decided to act on it and push to see it through rather than quitting trying or giving little effort? I think there are too many variables to say for certain.

Peace,
Bill

 

[bri89]

I believe in determinism, that we are machines in a sense, that nothing originates in us, we inherit our qualities, our training and environment will determine what experiences we have and what direction our lives takes. I think freewill personalizes forces that are really impersonal. If we go from poor to a millionaire, ultimately we are not responsible for it. Certain opportunities that can not be duplicated befell us, or maybe from a distant ancestor we inheritied exceptional intelligence that was noticed by a mentor who then put us on the track that would eventually lead to Harvard business school. The point is the determining force of inherited qualities is interacting with determining forces of training and outside influences.
I don’t even think choice exists the way we think it does; it doesn’t exist in a void. We never “choose” unencumbered or disinterestedly. What causes us to choose? I believe in a sort of stronger motive theory. I think we will always act in obedience to the strongest motive. For instance, a religious man is tempted to cheat on his wife, refrains from cheating, and then congratulates himself because he thinks he’s free. I don’t think it was a matter of freewill, but a different principle in action. Pleasing god through fidelity to his wife was a stronger motive than satisfying his carnal desires. He will either obey god’s imperative or he will obey his desires. Either way, he is not in the position of freely choosing, the strongest motive will prompt his will. I hope that makes sense. To my mind Twain disproved that it was a matter of free will if a man went from a coward to a war hero, that everything is the result of the determining force of temperament interacting with the determining forces of outside influences. The coward did not decide to conquer his fear in and of himself, something prompted him to it, perhaps a girlfriend told him he was a coward and was treated like a pariah, and because of that he was merely responding to and prompted by outside influences which changed him from one thing to another. It did not come from himself and was not really a matter of free choice. If anyone thinks I’m wrong please don’t respond with sarcasm, even on this forum there seems to be an excess of sarcasm and derision towards opposing views.

 

[Trurl]

Analysis/problem solving and will are not the same thing.

Not exactly the same… but in my circles making a decision is based upon analysis and problem solving. And if that process happens in the subconscious to a certain degree, then exercising our will is also contingent upon our non-conscious brain actitivy. Besides we do not know how the will’s decision making process works. As the study insinuates, it might very well be partially subconscious.

For example, the chess player could find the right move and then, for some reason–pity for his opponent, make the game more interesting, etc–deliberately make the wrong move.

Reference to stupidity is a strange “argument”.

And I don’t know anybody who thinks that about the brain. Talk about a strawman.

No, it is not a strawman, it is just sarcasm. After all “conservatism” is the name of the game, clinging to the “authorities” of some bygone era, even if those concepts have been amply refuted by by advancement of science. It is also obvious that it is very hard, sometimes impossible to change the ingrained supertitious worldview, so I would not be very surprised if a few people would still subscribe to this particular facet of the Aristotelian “teaching”.