Is free will real?

[The Grand Nudger]

Adding more doubt to non-free-will experiences serves well to justify my stance that nothing we experience is intrinsically more real than free will.

Meh, it serves our interests to apply scrutiny to what we experience, but this "free will or nothing" business is an immense, and I mean immense oversimplification, don't you think? I'm shooting for more of a "not free will, but something else that achieves the effect we refer to when we say -free will-....and also other stuff as well".

And over the past few days, as we've discussed free will, I can say that viewing it as deterministic, indeterministic, or illusory has not affected my snack-aisle experience of freely choosing what I'm going to buy, or of freely choosing my method of hiding said purchase from my wife.

I know right, it's almost as if your thoughts aren't generating reality and what might be true about your thoughts might not be true about reality.

[Mudhammam]

Okay, so let me ask you this. Say you see a beautiful sunset. Does knowing that it isn't intrinsically beautiful, but that it is an instinctive emotional response to certain visual stimulus that makes us "see" beauty in it, not make that beauty unreal?

Or will you accept that "real for us" is no less real than the light itself?

LOL no! It's REALLY beautiful to me in that moment. There's no "instrinsic" beauty except in that sense that X causes Y in individual Z at the sight of X and Z calls it beautiful... and then tries to copulate with it. So, yes, it's real, in the same way that Zebras have what we call stripes. They have a color configuration that invokes intense debate: are they white or black? I don't see how things are unreal simply because they're evaluative; values are real but they're not absolute or objective. This is all aside from free will, which is simply not an accurate formula of anything in the real world except perhaps a sense that involves a deep lack of awareness in regards to our infinite ignorance.

[Whateverist]

http://youtu.be/pF_MTFzm27A

[vorlon13]

I don't feel like reading this whole thread tonite, so if this has been mentioned,TS.

How do all the philosophical angles digest/explain/compost the Turing test.

(which, by the way, most of you pass, so far)

[Alex K]

I don't feel like reading this whole thread tonite, so if this has been mentioned,TS.

How do all the philosophical angles digest/explain/compost the Turing test.

(which, by the way, most of you pass, so far)

That is very interesting. Would you like to tell me more about it?

[bennyboy]

LOL no! It's REALLY beautiful to me in that moment. There's no "instrinsic" beauty except in that sense that X causes Y in individual Z at the sight of X and Z calls it beautiful... and then tries to copulate with it. So, yes, it's real, in the same way that Zebras have what we call stripes. They have a color configuration that invokes intense debate: are they white or black? I don't see how things are unreal simply because they're evaluative; values are real but they're not absolute or objective. This is all aside from free will, which is simply not an accurate formula of anything in the real world except perhaps a sense that involves a deep lack of awareness in regards to our infinite ignorance.

I see a sunlit mountain range, and call it beautiful-- because in the context of living as this particular human beaing, sunlit mountain ranges are really beautiful. I know it to be so, because I can see the beauty as clearly as I can see the color red. I then decide which peak I will walk to next: A or B. I'm at liberty to choose either, so I "listen" to my feelings, I consult my memories, I check the time, and I make my choice. That is the exact description of the exercise of free will.

I'm not sure what this "accurate formula" stuff is all about. Do you have an accurate formula of the self? I'm pretty sure you do not: in fact, it's not to be found anywhere, to be measured by anyone/anything, or even to be precisely defined in terms that COULD make the self objectively observable. And yet few, even here, are willing to go so far as to say that the self is an illusion. How about the idea of reality itself? Is it non-arbitrarily defined or even definable? What are your criteria for establishing whether an abstraction represents reality or not?

My answer to this last question is to accept that there's no demonstrably objective truth that holds true for all contexts, and take things as they present themselves in different contexts: particles in the context of QM, continuous surfaces in the context of classical mechanics and everyday observation, and free will in the context of living out my life as a human being. As you argued, the particle-ness of QM particles doesn't take away from the truth that my desk is flat; but I'd add that the REASON it doesn't is because of the shift in context.

[robvalue]

I choose to believe there is no free will.

[Mudhammam]

I see a sunlit mountain range, and call it beautiful-- because in the context of living as this particular human beaing, sunlit mountain ranges are really beautiful. I know it to be so, because I can see the beauty as clearly as I can see the color red. I then decide which peak I will walk to next: A or B. I'm at liberty to choose either, so I "listen" to my feelings, I consult my memories, I check the time, and I make my choice. That is the exact description of the exercise of free will.

No, no, no. I'm with you on "this red object before me manipulates my emotions and I describe it as beauty." There's nothing logically problematic or "objectively" erroneous with a description of your perception as subjectively determined by your ideal of the beautiful; that you're an infinitely complex chemical process interacting with an environment that, as a result, produces thought, and a certain configuration gives rise to the idea of beauty in a particular context. The idea of free will, on the other hand, is nonsensical and nowhere to be had under the microscope.

I'm not sure what this "accurate formula" stuff is all about. Do you have an accurate formula of the self? I'm pretty sure you do not: in fact, it's not to be found anywhere, to be measured by anyone/anything, or even to be precisely defined in terms that COULD make the self objectively observable. And yet few, even here, are willing to go so far as to say that the self is an illusion. How about the idea of reality itself? Is it non-arbitrarily defined or even definable? What are your criteria for establishing whether an abstraction represents reality or not?

The self is an illusion so far as it confuses the thought of "self" with a definite (immaterial?) object, or homunculus, that is a little man in the brain who is separate from experience, the thing upon whom experiences are impressed. Beneath all our conceptions is an idea, an idea that a singular, central "self" is thinking. Contrarily, our brains are thinking machines, and the thought "self" is the ever-present subject upon whom experiences typically take shape.

My answer to this last question is to accept that there's no demonstrably objective truth that holds true for all contexts, and take things as they present themselves in different contexts: particles in the context of QM, continuous surfaces in the context of classical mechanics and everyday observation, and free will in the context of living out my life as a human being. As you argued, the particle-ness of QM particles doesn't take away from the truth that my desk is flat; but I'd add that the REASON it doesn't is because of the shift in context.

You're suggesting practical free will; fine, that's simply saying it's a necessary illusion, and maybe it is. I'm saying metaphysical free will is a contradictio in adjecto.

[bennyboy]

The self is an illusion so far as it confuses the thought of "self" with a definite (immaterial?) object, or homunculus, that is a little man in the brain who is separate from experience, the thing upon whom experiences are impressed. Beneath all our conceptions is an idea, an idea that a singular, central "self" is thinking. Contrarily, our brains are thinking machines, and the thought "self" is the ever-present subject upon whom experiences typically take shape.

Okay, then at least you can agree that free will as as real as this metaphysical homunculus, upon which almost all our motivations and sense of abstraction are founded?

[The Grand Nudger]

As real as any other imaginary thing.