Do you believe in free will?

[Whateverist]

But a more pertinent question would be, given:
a) I believe incorrectly that I have free will and act accordingly;
b) I believe correctly that I have free will and act accordingly;
what observational differences will there be between a and b?

I'd like to choose:

c) I don't really understand the question but so far as I can tell I do at least have a very limited amount of free will some of the time.

[popeyespappy]

Speaking of free will Sam Harris has a new book of the subject coming out tomorrow.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451683...PDKIKX0DER

[The Grand Nudger]

I'd like to choose:

c) I don't really understand the question but so far as I can tell I do at least have a very limited amount of free will some of the time.

C(2): with regards to some things...maybe, but it's difficult to demonstrate that this is the case.

It really is a great subject, "why do we do what we do, am I at the wheel, is something else at the wheel, or am I the wheel itself".
(personally, im of the opinion that I'm the wheel itself, but maybe that's just in my nature...lol)

[Whateverist]

I'd like to choose:

c) I don't really understand the question but so far as I can tell I do at least have a very limited amount of free will some of the time.

C(2): with regards to some things...maybe, but it's difficult to demonstrate that this is the case.

It really is a great subject, "why do we do what we do, am I at the wheel, is something else at the wheel, or am I the wheel itself".
(personally, im of the opinion that I'm the wheel itself, but maybe that's just in my nature...lol)

The good news is there's no drivers test, written or otherwise. We just wheel these babies away as soon as we come down the birth canal.

Most of us can do this 'willing' in our sleep .. and do.

---

But back to the original post .. do I believe in free will? No, I choose not to. Yes, I have no choice. Wait, what?

[Godscreated]

Love selfish really, you must not be married, are you close to family?

Not married, but very close to my family. And I can proudly say that my love for them is an extremely selfish emotion. I love them because they represent extremely important values to me. Without them, I wouldn't exist as I do and since I love who I am, I would also love those who played a part in making me who I am.

And if and when I get married, it would be with someone who can give me reasons to love myself even more and for whom I could do the same.

I'm happy you're close to your family, so many are not and I think that's sad.
Maybe not, but when you get married I believe your opinion will change.
Why would you think your love for your family is a selfish emotion, they helped make you who you are because they love you, and they loved you before you became that person. What if they had not contributed much to your development would you love them less, or would you be less grateful to them. I do not think being thankful is quite the same as love, though thankfulness is a part of love. How is it that you see selfishness and love as the same thing, I find no definition of either to be compatible.

[genkaus]

I'm happy you're close to your family, so many are not and I think that's sad.

Depending on the family, not being close to them could be a good thing, not necessarily sad.

Maybe not, but when you get married I believe your opinion will change.

No, it won't. Since my marriage would be based on my beliefs.

Why would you think your love for your family is a selfish emotion,

Because it is an expression of my love for myself.

they helped make you who you are because they love you, and they loved you before you became that person.

They loved me for the potential I represented. I would not expect then to love me otherwise.

What if they had not contributed much to your development would you love them less, or would you be less grateful to them.

Yes and yes.

I do not think being thankful is quite the same as love, though thankfulness is a part of love.

Gratitude is irrelevant to love. I can be grateful to someone without loving them and I can love someone without having a cause to be grateful to them.

How is it that you see selfishness and love as the same thing, I find no definition of either to be compatible.

If you love someone, then they are valuable to you. To be valuable to you, they must hold more meaning (or more value) than others. The only way you can assign relative value like that, is if you have a relative importance of needs and desires with the value proportional to it. It is only when you are selfish, i.e. concerned with your own needs and desires, that you can assign relative importance to them. So, unless you are selfish, you are not capable of love.

A selfless person can never hold anything or anyone to be more important to him than anything or anyone else. So he cannot attach more importance to any particular entity. So he cannot "love" anything more than other - thereby making the word meaningless.

Before you are able to say "I love you", you should be able to say "I".

[The Grand Nudger]

It would be difficult to conceptualize a great many things without running "Freewill OS v1.0". In this regard it can be treated like many of the other assumptions that our minds seem to depend on, without depending on them being factually accurate.

[Nine]

I have a weird view on free will.. It is probably nonsense but here we go.

Basically I think that we have free will as far as we do make decisions (In a way) but I think that it has already been made. Not by a invisible man but more by our experiences. For example if you need to make a decision say between two options to walk home then all your past experiences thoughts and our surroundings give us our decision. Say you have gone home once and it took a long time where as the other way you know is faster you will choose that (unless you are bored and want a different view.)

So kinda like rather than the idea if you could reverse time and watch somebody make the choice each time it could be different. My idea is that they would always make the decision unless something was changed in their past. So in a way you choose but its already been decided based on everything that's already happened to you so you don't really. So unless you had multiple timelines with different environments the same thing would happen every time.

Hope this makes sense lol.

Keep in mind I was like 12/13 when this idea popped into my head. Ive never really thought about it since.

I feel like a crazy person

[Tempus]

I don't believe in 'free will' because I see no reason to. I don't think people feeling they have free will is worth much on its own. People's feelings and intuition are unreliable for establishing facts.

I don't even really understand what the hell free will is supposed to be anyway. If this free will exists in a physical-only world then it needs to be demonstrated that physical things can behave in a non-deterministic, non-random manner, since determinism and possibly 'randomness' are the only things the evidence currently indicates. If free will exists outside the physical world, then this non-physical world will need its existence demonstrated in the first place.

This, of course, isn't a flat out denial of free will; I just can't see any reason to take for granted that it exists.

[toro]

I don't believe in free will.

It seems to me a simple combination of the confusion to describe consciousness (which is none other than neurological changes created by the body doing things outside its control) with social norms, language, entropy, and the subjectivity of physical existence.