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fhansen
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The fact that God, nature, itself, or the force behind it, doesn’t prevent them, IOW, doesn’t interfere, is the essence of our free will.
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Serious
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According to some people the only thing that matters is the freedom to make a decision, even if it cannot be carried out. IF one accepts this position, THEN the so called “free will defense” is null and void. If you say that the ability to carry out that decision is of equal importance, then we are in synch. I say the same thing.
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JDaniel
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Serious
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If that makes you happy, go ahead.
Rather childish…
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fhansen
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I’m not sure; if a person would kill you if they weren’t paralyzed are they less of a murderer despite the fact that they can’t carry it out? They still will to murder.
Or, alternatively, if a person wills to murder but doesn’t, even though he was physically capable, because he fears the repercussions involved with being caught, has his freedom been totally compromised or merely physically curtailed- has his will been changed or merely restrained?
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JDaniel
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Seriously:If that makes you happy, go ahead.
Well, I made a decision to follow the influence of your lead.
God bless,
jd
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Serious
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Are you advocating the concept of thought-crime?
He himself decided and carried out the “act” of not giving in to the desire to murder. He was not restrained by some external force, he acted according to his inner fear. We are never “free” from our internal decision making system, which is probably very complicated.
Another example: I was brought up with a strict moral code. One aspect was to be polite, respectful and helpful to older people (always open the door for them, pass my seat to them, and little stuff like that). As such I find it (almost) impossible to stay seated on a bus, when I see an older person standing, even though I am already in the upper sixties. Now the question is: “was I brainwashed by my parents and grandparents who instilled this kind of beavior in me?”. If I really wanted to stay seated, I could do it. The fact is that I do NOT want to do it. So is my free will curtailed my myself?
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fhansen
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Your will chose freely between the various options and influences using whatever it had to go on including moral values.
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Serious
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Yes, indeed. Choose = make a decison + execute it. Agreed?
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davidv
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No. To choose = to decide on a particular course of action, whether this action has been completed or not. Your OP definition is not proper.
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Gorgias
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LOL…
As another poster has mentioned, very clever. Yet, it’s just clever hand-waving. You’re honestly suggesting there’s no qualitative distinction between a person, who takes “(name removed by moderator)ut from the external world”, makes use of his rationality, and makes a free choice of how to respond to that (name removed by moderator)ut, and a self-parking car, which likewise takes “(name removed by moderator)ut from the external world”, and follows a pre-determined algorithm in order to parallel park itself?
Riiiiight…!
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Gorgias
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Of course you can – you choose to defer taking vanilla, in favor of waiting till you find chocolate!
You and I have already disagreed on the way the free will defense does or doesn’t work in this context. However, before I respond to your request, let me ask you: in the context of free will, ‘determinism’ is posited as its contrary: that is, if there is no free will, then there is determinism. How would you define determinism?
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Sair
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A distinction, certainly, but one of degree or of kind? A qualitative or quantitative difference?LOL…
As another poster has mentioned, very clever. Yet, it’s just clever hand-waving. You’re honestly suggesting there’s no qualitative distinction between a person, who takes “(name removed by moderator)ut from the external world”, makes use of his rationality, and makes a free choice of how to respond to that (name removed by moderator)ut, and a self-parking car, which likewise takes “(name removed by moderator)ut from the external world”, and follows a pre-determined algorithm in order to parallel park itself?
Riiiiight…!
I notice you’ve also rather unsubtly snuck in an assumption that our use of rationality is “free” in the sense of being undetermined by anything, by any influence other than our own self (whatever that entity might be - although I notice advocates of free-will insist it must be separate from the actual substance that makes up our brains and nervous systems and sensory systems in order to be truly “free”).
A self-parking car, to take up your example, has a set of programmed responses that will be triggered by certain aspects of its environment, picked up by sensors, presumably, built into the car. It doesn’t have the ability to learn that is possessed by even the humblest of mammals and birds. If one considers how much more complex is a human brain than the onboard computer system in a car, it should be obvious that we have the ability to sense, store and process far more information in a far greater variety of ways. If you take the time to observe the way people behave, it becomes clear that we are born with, and develop through our life experiences, certain ‘programmed’ responses to circumstances we sense in our environment. We are creatures of instinct to a far greater extent than we realise - even to the point where it now appears, through neurological experiments, that decisions are processed and made prior to our conscious awareness of making a decision. What does this mean for free will?
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Serious
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If it CANNOT be completed?
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fhansen
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I guess I don’t understand. Say two people both have a desire to murder another person because it would benefit them materially in some manner. One refrains from killing because of conscience or fear of the legal system or both while the other one goes ahead and carries out the desire. They were both physically free to perform the act but only one did it. Was the other one not free?
It seems to me that free will all begins and ends in the will itself. It may have no effect on the world-and therefore no relevance-if I can’t possibly carry out the dictates of my will, but that doesn’t mean I can’t continue to will it.
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Serious
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No, that is not the question. You can choose to take vanilla, or nothing. That would be an acceptable argument. But there is no chocolate, there will be no chocolate. As such you cannot choose chocolate.
I am not sure where… We started but never finished.
Just like everyone else. No degree of freedom. Your turn to answer.
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Gorgias
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Not at all. There’s room to discuss the degree to which factors influence our decisions, but unless you’re espousing an absolute causal determinism, then we’re still talking about a human’s ability to make a rational decision, taking into account as many of these influences as exist, but still retaining the ability to make a free choice.
So learned responses invalidate the notion of free will?
Nevertheless, we have the ability to decide, every time that we walk up to an electric socket, whether we’re gonna stick our finger in it. Through the exercise of free will, and the putting into action of our decisions, that this is a bad idea. Each time we walk past a socket, though, we have the ability to try it again. Yet, based on our experiences, we choose not to do so… or not.
A self-parking car, however, has no free will – it cannot decide “I’m not going to parallel park”, even if it is the fiftieth time its owner has decided to park the car onto a set of traffic spikes…
You – or someone – had a link to these experiments. Can you provide that link? I’m interested in some of the assertions that it may or may not be making…
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Gorgias
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Two thoughts:
FIrst, you seem to be implying that free will requires the ability to make all choices at all times. If you placed all possible flavors of ice cream in front of me, and my choice was “1988 Convertible Ford Mustang”, then likewise you would conclude that I had no free will – after all, I wasn’t able to make the choice that I wanted! That, naturally, is absurd!
Second, If we condition the question of free will on the particular choices available, then we’re saying that free will is a question of environment and not of the rational agent. If your definition of free will is “what the world gives me”, then you’ve stopped making sense. I would argue that free will is something that is intrinsic, not external to the rational agent.
“No degree of freedom of action”, you mean.Just like everyone else. No degree of freedom. Your turn to answer.
You often reference the example of prisoners, whose ability to act has been curtailed. You mention this, I presume, as an example of “no degrees of freedom”; in other words, you’re making the case that prisoners have no free will.
I have problems with this on two counts: first, it says that free will is a function of situation – as I’ve mentioned before to you, what you’re saying is that a person goes through various states of free will throughout his life, with the possibility of relatively less and relatively more (and maybe even completely none) at various times. That doesn’t seem right: free will is, or it isn’t.
Second, you’ve used the notion of constraint to argue against free will in various situations: hostages, crimes of rape. Let’s use this prisoner example that you’ve made recourse to. We have a prisoner sitting in his cell. His ability to actualize his decisions has been taken away. According to you, he has no free will.
However, some small percentage of prisoners, under the same set of constraints, decide that the best course of action is to attempt escape. They may or may not succeed, but that is immaterial: according to you, “zero degrees of freedom” means “no free will”. Yet, some take this “zero degrees of freedom” and make choices substantially different than others. Your example, then, says that the two prisoners – all other things being equal – demonstrate ‘free will’ and ‘lack of free will’ simultaneously. In other words, we’ve reduced your definition to an absurdity…
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Sair
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Where does one draw the line between responding to influences and freely making a decision?
They are just one more factor in the determination of our choices.
As I mentioned, we receive and process information to a far greater extent than a computer would - I would expect at least that a self-parking car might have sensors that would pick up obstacles such as traffic spikes, if it was worth the money one has to pay for such things.
Here’s one link I’ve just found: wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision
But I first became aware of findings that our brains make decisions and coordinate reactions to circumstances before we are consciously aware of doing so through watching an Australian television show called Sleek Geeks. In one episode, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki explained that when, for example, we jump out of the way of an approaching car, our eyes have seen it and sent the information to our brains and caused us to react defensively - by jumping out of the way - before we are consciously aware of seeing and reacting to the hazard.
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JDaniel
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Seriously:If that makes you happy, go ahead.
Is that the best you’ve got? Over and over and over again, with the same, tired invective? And you talk about “childish?”
God bless,
jd
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