No soul? No free will and no responsibility then, yet the latter's essential...

[Gawdzilla Sama]

My wife wouldn't put up with that shit. That's one of the reasons we chose each other.

My missus defined our relationship after we’d been shacked up for about a year. Over supper, I jokingly asked, ‘What would you do if I cheated on you?’ Between bites, she smiled and said, ‘Kill you in your sleep.’

Boru

That would rob her of the look in your eyes.

[brewer]

Here's the argument in brief video form for free will impossibilism, for anyone who's unfamiliar with it (Shazza?). 





If there were some kind of ethereal supernatural "soul" in the picture (for which there is, of course, zero evidence) then perhaps some from of free will would be possible, but for the atheist, it's a simple impenetrable brick wall. No human has free will. And yet,

For society to function in any kind of moral way people need be held responsible for their actions (eg - crime). You frequently hear the line "they did it of their own free will" etc. I say this is the core paradox of being alive in society and that the sooner everybody gets on board with it the better, instead of giving a lame ass shrug and carrying on as normal. Here's my new mantra, to be drilled into my puny, malleable, yielding, fickle mind:

We need be held responsible for our actions, including by ourselves, although in truth the logic and evidence overwhelmingly directs that we are not. This is the fundamental foundation of a modern, atheistic, civilised society, and the bolded bit need be drilled home from infancy.

Yup, it's the mother of all paradoxes, but there we have it, it's....inescapable.

Forty thoughts AF?

As far as I'm concerned I have free will. I don't know what the fuck you're on about.

The above typed with the application of free will. 

The above typed with the application of free will. 

The above typed with the application of free will. 

The above typed with the application of free will.

[Rahn127]

I freely made the choice to not watch the video.

I have the ability to make choices. That is free will.

And none of that has anything to do with an imaginary idea called a soul. It's also not related to Darth Vader nor Santa Claus. And again I chose each and every word I typed here.

Using my fre wil to even spell things wrong if I so choose.

[Duty]

OK so my sleep was plagued by nightmares of me leading humanity over a cliff edge, because of concerns over this free will issue I think. Narcissistic delusions of grandeur not withstanding, I found a solution (I think) to the problem this morning:

Put your ethics and morals in charge, that's the true you, the CEO. That ethical, moral, principled bit is the real you and is responsible for your actions. I (the real me) can change but must always be held to account and is always responsible for my actions. The retort “but you're not responsible for your morals, ethics and principles” fails because I AM my morals, ethics and principles, according to my definition.

Not being yourself is THE fundamental fail – "always be yourself" is a well known phrase, and jibes most pleasingly with this approach. Encouraging.

[Peebothuhlu]

....  "Always be yourself" is a well known phrase, and jibes most pleasingly with this approach. Encouraging.

 But... if I'm not 'Myself'...

  W͏̼̙̠̤̖ͅh͉̬̻o̷̳ ̟̘͢a҉͔m̤̗̮̼̥̬ ̵͖͕̺I̢͇̰̗̼̤͇͓.͈͕̜̀.̛.̣͎̖̬̺͙̣

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I freely made the choice to not watch the video.

I have the ability to make choices. That is free will.

And none of that has anything to do with an imaginary idea called a soul. It's also not related to Darth Vader nor Santa Claus. And again I chose each and every word I typed here.

Using my fre wil to even spell things wrong if I so choose.

Maybe you're simply deterministically constrained to believe you have free will.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I lol at believers who think they'd rape, murder and steal if there was no god. Why don't they NOT do those things just because they're shitty?

[Sal]

We make the decisions regardless of whether we freely will anything, and we hope to dissuade poor decision-making...especially by non freely willed means. If the candy machine gave us a snickers when we ordered a twix, we'd be just as pissed.

I also don't understand why people have this notion that not having free will absolves them from responsibility or, more aptly, consequences from their actions.

The experience of a Self is the main reason we even have this idea of "free will", IMO. If we take into account that everything else in nature follows a regular and determinable pattern, that we're able to explain with accuracy (natural laws), then I think the same is true for brains. Some try to escape this with quantum woo randomness, but this would just mean our volition were random too.

At the face of it, "free will" is to me two incompatible concepts put together. Instead I think we have an illusion of making completely independent actions, when the reality is that we are just as much a part of the natural and causal physical reality as everything else. A brain isn't some exotic structure capable of defying causality.

[The Grand Nudger]

We don't require brains to be able to do that to prosecute someone for assault - and even though we know that there are factors and circumstances which strongly correlate with future crime - we don't have to drop charges if we happen to find out that the defendant was mercilessly beaten as a child.

We think that this might have an effect on their free will™ just like so many other things does...right down to being hungry or having low blood sugar, but none of them save for a complete lack of fitness to stand is relevant to questions of guilt.

Not having any free will, at all, might absolve a person of moral guilt, as another poster mentioned..but legal guilt is not moral guilt, and our system runs on legal guilt. It's not necessary for our system to work as-is...but if we insist and if we want to consider it when we determine things like sentencing...that's fine. I love desert.

[Smaug]

Free Will is one interesting topic. I've had a discussion on this matter with a friend who is non-religious and is interested in science yet he is much bothered by explanations implying that the brain functions are fully determined by the laws of Physics. He argued that there has to be a special decision-making feature that is not constrained by the brain's current configuration or the input signals. Further discussion made it clear the he did not mean any sort of randomizers since random generation of control signals is not Free Will. This is very interesting since this person is one of the most reasonable people I know. There has to be a very strong psychological attachment to this kind of ideas.

My conslusions are the following:
- the 'classic' or 'strong' concept of Free Will directly contradicts Casuality. It has to be fundametally outside of this world.
- 'classic' Free Will is a placeholder concept that people made up due to their lack of understanding of the world. It's one of the most undefined concepts out there.
- for some people it's an integral part of their personality which helps draw a definite line between them and the rest of the world. Thus questioning it may be subconsciously treated as some kind of a personal attack or a threat.
- to add to the previous point, it's so engrained in culture by now that for some it's hard to wrap their mind around the way things really work.

Speaking of the practical side, the absence of the 'classical' Free Will does not remove responsibility and does not undermine the judicial institutions of the society. Here's an example. Let's say a thief has been caught red-handed. The new scientific knowledge may allow us to learn more how and why they became a thief and what was going in their brain when they made a decision to steal. But this does not remove the need to correct their anti-social behaviour. We know by now that behaviour is formed by learning, 'positive' and 'negative' stimuli. Thus the judge's going to give them some negative stimuli in form of jailtime or a fine, or something else.