"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[Minimalist]

By Free Will I mean the ability to willfully choose to "Do otherwise" at any given precise moment. So I am able, for example, at this exact moment to choose what I am doing, at that exact moment ( as that exact moment has now already passed).

Okay. I wanted to make sure you weren't talking about god's "get-out-of-fuck-up-excuse" that the theists invented to cover up all the shit in his "perfect " creation!

[theVOID]

I don't believe our minds are acausal so i don't believe in free will.

[IceSage]

I love these poll threads but I can never EXACTLY answer the poll, because I always have a unique point of view.

Yes, we have the ability to make conscious decisions at time. We're able to do whatever we want. However, is this us wanting to do these things, or is it just complex responses in our brain that make us think these are the actions we should be taking. Have you ever reacted to something badly, or you were sacred and jumped in fright? Was it your choice to act then?

If you get angry, is that your choice, or is it part of a bunch of reactions and "programming" in your brain that makes you get upset.

Yes, we have free will... But what exactly determines a person's thought process?

[Tiberius]

Course we're free to choose otherwise that would suggest there was some 'planner' behind everything, which there is no proof for.

No it doesn't. Current scientific studies show that the subconscious mind makes decisions for us before the conscious mind. Our consciousness is essentially a slave to our subconscious, and all choices we feel are but illusions.

So it is still "us" making the decision (i.e. our body), but it isn't the part of us that we associate with free choice (our conscious mind).

[Edwardo Piet]

And furthermore I don't see why we should associate our consciousness with free choice anyway. Since when does "consciousnesss"= freedom? If a rock was conscious would it suddenly have free will? What if it then also grew legs and could move around as well as being "conscious"... then would it have free will? Conscious will and "free will" are different things as far as I'm concerned.

But yes, if we're making decisions before we're even aware of them, that makes free will not only absurd and magical but also impossible

Either the laws of physics are probabilistic or deterministic. If they're probabilistic, since we are part of nature and we don't have a supernatural will, I don't see why us being conscious or intelligent would make any difference to that matter... at all. It sure makes us more likely to think we have free will

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Why must it be either/or?

There are at least three other alternatives; viz ; Soft determinism,(Compatibilism), Indeterminism, and "I don't know".

Me? I don't know, although I suspect free will is largely an illusion, and lean towards psychological determinism and/or soft determinism.. I can't decide.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent.[1] It may, however, be more accurate to say that compatibilists define 'free will' in a way that allows it to co-exist with determinism. Strictly speaking, Compatibilism defines free will as more of a Liberty - as "freedom to act (according to one's determined motives)".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_determinism

Indeterminism is the concept that events (certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused deterministically (cf. causality) from prior events.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism

[Edwardo Piet]

The compatabilist defines 'free will' differently and so we're talking about a different thing.

[Watson]

Interestingly enough, I just watched the Minority Report(or part of it, anyway) and I thought it was a rather interesting moral question for those who do not beleive in free will.(Although the movie itself is only decent.)

If there is no such thing as free will, then all action and reaction can be, to soem extent, predicted. Wouldn't this suggest that if we have suitable means of predicting a person's actions before they happen, we are obligated to prevent those actions, if they are a crime in the eyes of the law? This denies people the ability, capacity, and fundamental right to make split-second decisions based entirely on internal changes.

Basically, if there is no such thing as free will, then this kind of pre-emptive stoppage of crime is permissable. Even though it is a violation of human rights.

Contrarily, if such action is predictable to a point,(excluding the aforementioned split-second changes) then the way of things would seem to suggest that their is a pre-ordained structure or 'plan' for the future. It might be considered a scientifically plausible kind of 'Fate.' "Science has stolen most of our miracles."

Interesting, innit?

[downbeatplumb]

You can be 'primed' to make certain choices.

For example experiments have proven people exposed to pictures of old people will walk a given distance slower than people exposed to pictures of young people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)

[The Omnissiunt One]

I don't know. It's an area of metaphysics I haven't really looked into much. The thought that my decisions aren't free is pretty scary, so I'm going to go with the Ostrich/Young Earth Creationist approach to reality on this one.