Do you believe in free will?

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah, free will seems to depend on dualism i agree. Back onto Compatibilism vs Hard incompatibilism, what in your opinion are good arguments in favor of the latter?

Well, I very much love Daniel Dennett's analogy with "magic". I just go the other path to him.

He says how, the only magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic, it is a bunch of tricks. The only "Free Will" that is actually real isn't true "absolute" free will, it's a cheap substitute. Daniel Dennet, in his own words (a bit paraphrased by me perhaps) says "You should take the cheap substitute, it's pretty good", I would myself but I feel it is misleading because despite the fact I think we have freedom, I do not see how it is the will that is free. So I am not willing to go with pseudo-free will because I don't think it actually has anything to do with the will being free and I'm worried people might misunderstand or misrepresent my position if I accept compatabilism.

Basically, if I see that the will is completely contingent and dependent on other things, then it is in no way actually free! So, like "Magic", it's not actually magic, it's a bunch of tricks - it's a different meaning entirely! We'd have to redefine will, "Will" would have to mean a completely different thing if we are to call it truly free... just as "Magic" in the sense of a bunch of tricks is completely different to actual wizardly and miracle working. The key difference being that magic already has two different definitions. And I don't see why the hell we should redefine "Will". I take "Will" to mean what it normally means, and "free" to mean what it normally means and I don't then see the two as compatible.

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[...] However free will seems absolutely obvious to me and I don't see how we can explain it away therefore I conclude that the naturalistic world view is incorrect because it fails to properly explain the data of our existence and can't account for free will which seems quite undeniable.

Your personal credulity on the matter (e.g."It just makes sense to me") or your incredulity over the idea of there being no free will (e.g."I just can't see it happening") is no argument for the truth of free will.

I don't think the arguments provided really do anything to do away with free will.

Well, what problems do you have with them?

Isn't this like saying well you were beat by your parents therefore you beat your kids and there's nothing you can do about it because that is the way you are.

No, that would be fatalism.

It's more like saying: At the exact moment you are beating your kids or being beaten by your parents (or doing anything else whatsoever) you are, by definition, doing just that, so you can't at that exact moment do otherwise. Because to do otherwise, you would have to, at that exact moment, be otherwise, and it's not possible at any exact moment to be different to how you are at that exact moment. Because how you are at that exact moment you, by definition, are at that exact moment so you can't be anything else (at that exact moment) because then you wouldn't be what you are at that exact moment.

Or, to try and be more pithy, and to put it another way: At any given moment it isn't possible to do otherwise because then we are talking about an entirely different moment, because you yourself are part of the moment itself.

Also see my signature.

[The Omnissiunt One]

However free will seems absolutely obvious to me and I don't see how we can explain it away therefore I conclude that the naturalistic world view is incorrect because it fails to properly explain the data of our existence and can't account for free will which seems quite undeniable. I don't think the arguments provided really do anything to do away with free will.

Your belief proves nothing. You cannot be aware of the absence of outside forces subconsciously determining your choices. That's why they're subconscious; you don't know whetehr they're there or not.

Yes you do have theories about these things but unfortunately none of them work. You say life arouse naturally by pure matter with no intelligent guidance and yet you cannot recreate an intelligent experiment to create life.

So? We may be able to one day. We may not. That neither legitimises the position 'Life can't arise from non-life', nor 'God exists'. At best, we'll conclude that we can't produce life from non-life. God is a non-sequitur.

Multi-verse is a nice theory except it has absolutely no evidence to support it because it's nothing more then speculation.

It has one major advantage over God: we know universes can exist. We don't know that disembodied, all-powerful minds can exist.

These are topics for another discussion but the point is you don't have a naturalistic explanation you have nothing more then wishful theories that have not proven conclusive in any of those cases.

Unlike God, then. You're entirely inconsistent. You say that we can't make conclusions on the answer to these questions, but you do so yourself.

Aren't you doing the same thing by saying free will is an illusion and trying to explain away the perfect fine tuning of the universe by saying well there's an infinity of universes out there that we just can't see. God as well as multiple universes would both be beyond our universe and beyond our ability to study scientifically so your using pure faith on that one.

First, show why fine tuning, if it exists at all, requires an explanation more than, say, fine tuning for the existence of comets. The argument is anthropocentrism at its best, as it presupposes that life is significant.

Again I think your backwards, you are the one trying to force the evidence into a naturalistic conclusion when it simply can't be done because you are certain that matter is all there is. Yet when matter can't explain phenomenons such as love, beauty, truth, free will, morality etc. you simply say these things aren't real. I guess it makes sense that you don't believe in a God that you can't see or hear since you don't even believe in common sense realities such as free will.

'Matter can't explain love, beauty, truth, etc.' Evidence, please. Love is a bio-chemical phenomenon which evolution produced to make us faithful to one partner. Sterile, but true. Truth is simply when our ideas correspond accurately with the outside world. Beauty is just a reaction to the world, and is fairly subjective. Free will... well, you assume it exists. I believe it does too, but we could easily deny it.

[theVOID]

t's more like saying: At the exact moment you are beating your kids or being beaten by your parents (or doing anything else whatsoever) you are, by definition, doing just that, so you can't at that exact moment do otherwise. Because to do otherwise, you would have to, at that exact moment, be otherwise, and it's not possible at any exact moment to be different to how you are at that exact moment. Because how you are at that exact moment you, by definition, are at that exact moment so you can't be anything else (at that exact moment) because then you wouldn't be what you are at that exact moment.

Woah massive tautology.

[Edwardo Piet]

Exactly, the reasoning is tautological.

[theVOID]

BTW, we do in fact have naturalist explanations for The origins of life (Abiogenesis), Fine tuning (Multi-verse, Mathematical Necessity) consciousness (monist theory, Metzinger, Spinoza etc.) Morality (Desirism, Moral naturalism, Moral theory of evolution etc) Rationality (Reliablism etc.) and i reject "true free will" as it has not been demonstrated or made logically necessary.

Yes you do

Then why did you say the opposite eariler?

"there has yet to be a naturalistic explanation for the big bang, fine tuning, the origins of life, consciousness, the moral law, rationality, or free will." - Flobee

have theories about these things but unfortunately none of them work.

Define "Work".

You say life arouse naturally by pure matter with no intelligent guidance and yet you cannot recreate an intelligent experiment to create life.

We have shown that many parts of the process can be done via the proximity of certain compunds and environmental factors alone, not to mention other significant sucesses in creating synthetic cells and forming RNA from simpler also artificial protiens, compounds etc and having them replicating, then synthetic cell construction:

Amino Acids
Self replication of RNA
Synthetic Cells

We have a wealth of information from many stages of the process, especially from the RNA experiments, that show self-replicating structures (The prerequisit for evolution) and the components required to make them are very much in the realm of natural mechanism - Your argument naturalistic explanations are invalid because they haven't recreated the entire process is irrelevent and you know it - you are entirely unjustified as dismissing it. We have evidence in support of a naturalistic position, thus making the position reasonable, unlike the supernatural alternative, we have no evidence that your Wizzard friend (God) got involved anywhere.

Multi-verse is a nice theory except it has absolutely no evidence to support it because it's nothing more then speculation.

No evidence = true
Pure speculation = False

You clearly have a meager understanding of what M-Theory is, it is a complex and comprehensive mathematical framework that is able to explain every known phenomenon in physics and provides the ability for the first time to reconcile them into a single framework. This is a well developed hypothesis, and is completely prone to investigation - It can be falsified and verified, and it will onyl be a matter of time (proponents hope years) before one or the other is achieved - This alone makes it a far more credible than your Wizzard hypothesis, which as you know is neither verifiable or falsifiable.

These are topics for another discussion but the point is you don't have a naturalistic explanation you have nothing more then wishful theories that have not proven conclusive in any of those cases.

Bring up the topic then!

It's clearly more substantial than "wishful theories" - That is the domain of your Wizzard. We have more evidence for Abiogenesis alone than you do for the Wizzard in entirety - This makes naturalism quite clearly the only rational position to hold.

Aren't you doing the same thing by saying free will is an illusion and trying to explain away the perfect fine tuning of the universe by saying well there's an infinity of universes out there that we just can't see. God as well as multiple universes would both be beyond our universe and beyond our ability to study scientifically so your using pure faith on that one.

Are you trying to relate free will to the multiverse or was that just poorly phrased?

I am not trying to explain away free will, i feel no need to explain away something that i do not believe exists - my position on Free Will follows from my naturalism, which is a conclusion reached through my epistemology; Reliblisim - And this is because the scientific method is EASILY the most reliable, accurate, productive and explanatory methodology for determining the truth of a given proposition ever discovered, thus i construct similar methodologies in assessing all truth claims. It requires a far higher standard of acceptance than you theists are used to.

Anyway, there could be any number of reasons for why the fine-tuning has taken place, what this is not is a positive arguemnt for the existence of Wizzards interfering - which is ultimately what propose. To attempt a dichotomy here between the Multiverse and Wizzards is pure incredulity.

Again I think your backwards, you are the one trying to force the evidence into a naturalistic conclusion when it simply can't be done because you are certain that matter is all there is.

That is a misrepresentation - I take the position that matter and energy are all that is reasonable to believe, this does not ultimately conclude upon the existence of the supernatural, it is simply a stance that there is no good reason to believe in any supernatural proposition ever proposed. There appears not to be a single instance where nature is not enough.

Secondly, you keep mentioning this "evidence" yet haven't presented any as an example - I wonder why that is.... Could it be yet another theist making bare assertions? I think so.

Yet when matter can't explain phenomenons such as love, beauty, truth, free will, morality etc. you simply say these things aren't real.

Are you a joke? Is this a joke? I'm really dumbfounded by your apparent stupidity here.

No naturalist ever said that these phenomenon weren't real. What the fuck do you think we call our experiences of these phenomenon? We only contest that these phenomenon have entirely natural causes - We argue that you have misattributed these phenomenon to another non-existent phenomenon.

I guess it makes sense that you don't believe in a God that you can't see or hear since you don't even believe in common sense realities such as free will.

So you have an argument for the existence of free will, or are you just going to keep committing the bare-assertion fallacy?

[chasm]

Ok, you too.

Always.

I don't mean materialism as in worldly possessions if that's what you mean, I mean materialism as in naturalism or as in the belief that matter is all that there is in the universe. In this case I doubt satanists would be materialists because they believe in the spirit of satin.

Okay, 1. I don't think they believe in the spirit of SATIN. That's a fabric, 2. I know you mean Satan. And no, if you know even the littlest bit about Satanism, they DON'T worship or believe in Satan.

I'm talking about free will as in our ability to freely make decisions. We don't have any free choice when it comes to gravity.

Then, of course we have free will. I can choose everything. My favorite color, which foods I like and don't like, if I like this movie or not, if I should pick this job or this job, etc.

I think you misunderstood a little bit sorry if I wrote in a confusing way.

Not entirely your fault. I am confused very easily.

What I'm asking I guess is if you all as atheists believe in free will as in free choice like the freedom of choice to choose to post on these forums or the freedom to choose a favorite color or whatever choice you can think of.

Yes, I believe in that.

Then my next question is that if you as an atheist believe in free will how exactly do you explain it since according to atheism the universe is composed completely of matter and in this view the human person is nothing more then a combination of chemicals and particles. I'm saying if all we are is chemicals then it doesn't seem possible that we could have free will.

And I'M saying that if we are all creations of a malevolent, control-freak sky god, it doesn't seem possible that we could have free will.

So essentially the question is do you believe that human beings have free will in their choices and if so how do you explain such a phenomenon from an atheistic standpoint?

From my standpoint anyway, I explain it as this: I am a thinking creature. I have thoughts. I have power over myself and my thoughts, and therefore my actions and decisions; free will as you call it.

May I ask how you explain free will from a deist standpoint?

[Flobee]

From my standpoint anyway, I explain it as this: I am a thinking creature. I have thoughts. I have power over myself and my thoughts, and therefore my actions and decisions; free will as you call it.

May I ask how you explain free will from a deist standpoint?

I would explain it similar to how you've explained. We are separate from our thoughts and do have power over them to be able to discern them and make decisions between them but in order for us to do that "we" or "I" would have to be distinct from my thoughts, outside of them so to speak, this is what I would describe as our soul. In naturalism however there really isn't an "I" or a "me" because we are nothing more then the chemicals of our bodies, we are only a brain. So we would think in terms of saying things like "hey use your brain," but that implies that we are distinct from our brain.
The argument essentially is that without the belief in a soul or immaterial reality we cannot explain free will as the posters above me have agreed on as well as the major atheists I have listed because we are nothing more then our matter or we are the matter and so "we" don't govern ourselves because there is no self, there is merely matter governed by predetermined physical laws.

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No naturalist ever said that these phenomenon weren't real.

To say that free will and consciousness are illusions seems to be saying that they are not real. To say that nothing is truly evil or that there is no absolute objective morality is to say that morality is not real. Those are all positions of major atheists.

So you have an argument for the existence of free will, or are you just going to keep committing the bare-assertion fallacy?

Yes we are created with a body and a soul, a self distinct from simply the matter of our bodies which makes us unique from plants or animals and gives us the ability to freely choose things apart from being governed totally by physical laws and allows us to know the moral law from our conscience. All these things seem to be basic realities experienced by all human beings at all times, every one knows they can choose, knows they are conscious, knows that there truly is right and wrong, these are properties of our soul.

[chasm]

In naturalism however there really isn't an "I" or a "me" because we are nothing more then the chemicals of our bodies, we are only a brain. So we would think in terms of saying things like "hey use your brain," but that implies that we are distinct from our brain.

Yes there is. At least, I'm not a naturalist so I don't know why you are using that argument with me.

The argument essentially is that without the belief in a soul or immaterial reality we cannot explain free will as the posters above me have agreed on as well as the major atheists I have listed because we are nothing more then our matter or we are the matter and so "we" don't govern ourselves because there is no self, there is merely matter governed by predetermined physical laws.

I don't want to explain free will. I have it and that's good enough for me. I can admit that I don't know, but I'm not going to believe in God just because something can't be explained.

[Flobee]

[quote='Flobee' pid='92279' dateline='1283900885']
In naturalism however there really isn't an "I" or a "me" because we are nothing more then the chemicals of our bodies, we are only a brain. So we would think in terms of saying things like "hey use your brain," but that implies that we are distinct from our brain.

Yes there is. At least, I'm not a naturalist so I don't know why you are using that argument with me.

If you are not a naturalist what are you? Do you believe in some sort of supernatural power or spirituality?

I'm not necessarily singling you out trying to argue with you I'm just putting forward this argument and asking how you guys respond to it. I never set out trying to prove God in this post I'm simply saying that atheism almost necessarily subscribes to the naturalist or materialist world view and I think we've shown that free will is not possible with such a view. So if you believe in free will I think it should make you think twice about believing in only a natural universe with nothing beyond it.vv

I don't want to explain free will. I have it and that's good enough for me. I can admit that I don't know, but I'm not going to believe in God just because something can't be explained.

I think in some ways taking a position like that is a refusal to look at the evidence and see where it leads. That's like a Christian saying "I just believe it because the Bible says so and that's that!" Our belief's should be in accord with reason and I don't think believing in free will and naturalism can go hand in hand so you either decide you don't believe in free will or you don't believe in naturalism. I think it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to convince yourself that there is no free will is all I'm saying.

But as you say you don't believe in a purely material universe, so what kind of atheist are you, how do you believe the universe got here?

[everythingafter]

Do we have no more control over ourselves then a rock does when falling down a hill, or a computer governed completely by our programming?

Well, you have your mind, of course. I would hope that means something to you. Rocks and computers aren't quite analogous to the human mind, or for that matter, any other intelligent species in the animal kingdom.

According to your world view rocks and computers are quite analogous to the human mind because they are all the product of unintelligent physical laws governing matter actually. It is atheist scientists like Steven Pinker who are the ones that compare the human person to a computer not me.

Wrong on the computer point. Computers were, of course, created by the human mind, not unintelligent physical laws, but indeed, rocks were. It doesn't matter whatever atheist you present to me who says, "Oh, humans are like computers!" (It may be true to some degree on the ability to compute figures, etc.) I'm sure Pinker was making a point (although in the context you provide, I can't see it unless you give a link), but to compare computer programming with human thought is insufficient, and computers are not at all the result of unintelligent physical laws.