RE: Is there freewill?
September 16, 2014 at 5:11 am
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2014 at 5:16 am by Lemonvariable72.)
(September 16, 2014 at 3:47 am)fr0d0 Wrote:(September 15, 2014 at 10:33 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: Are hobbits good at dodging because they're small or is that just you?
What don't you understand? Mine isn't a dodge, but a precise answer.
An agent is free to do what their will dictates. If I'm holding you prisoner and restricting your movements and making most of your choices for you, then you are no longer a free agent.
The distinction is the choice to so something (will) and the ability to do it (agency).
To repeat, we have no free will, but we are free agents.
To be clear, there isn't any reference to belief or faith in what I'm saying here.
There, did that hurt? However if we are free agents, but without free will my point to Erich above still stands
(September 16, 2014 at 3:42 am)Michael B Wrote:(September 15, 2014 at 1:13 pm)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: What what will would happen to the christian religion of there is not? As it is right now the only reason to think there could be freewill is because of the heinzberg uncertainty principle which states that you cannot know where the electron is. This principle was postulated in the 1920s, and has yet to be proven wrong. How ever there is good reason to think it may be wrong, and simply a limitation of our knowledge and technology. If that is the case that mean that according to classical everything has been set in motion since the big bang. In other words no freewill.
Hi Lemon
A few thoughts. Sorry if they seem a bit disconnected.
1) A pedantic point: I think you mean 'Heisenberg', and the principle is that you can't know a particle's location and speed at the same time (the principle is actually framed in terms of momentum, but momentum and speed are proportional). As precision of one measurement is increased the other reduces proportionally (a doubling in the precision of the measurement of location leads to a halving of the precision of measurement of speed).
2) Discussion of free will has never, as far as I know, rested on the Heisenberg principle which simply describes a measurement problem. Free will is more a philosophical position (and an existential one) than a straight scientific one. Or, to put it another way, it is generally taken from experience rather than measurement.
3) Christianity has traditionally not asserted free will. Rather it has asserted a certain bondage of the will to disordered desires, and that the grace of God is required to free that will from that bondage. That bondage has traditionally been seen to continue even in the life of the Christian, the subject of a great debate between Pelagius (who asserted the Christian, certainly after baptism, was capable of a sinless life) and Augustine (who asserted that the Christian still has some disordered will until death) in the fifth century. Augustine 'won' that debate and Pelagius was widely declared a heretic (though the Eastern Church, which was to become the Orthodox Church, had greater sympathy for Pelagius's views, at least as an ideal). Occasionally Christians have held out an ideal of being able to choose a sinless life, certainly after 'conversion' of some kind (be it through baptism or otherwise); John Wesley, for example, took this position, but that position has generally been a minority report among the theologians of the Church.
4) Whenever anybody raises the subject of free will I want to ask 'what do you mean?' What must the will be free from to be considered free? Must the will be free of all influence from nature and nurture?
5) Because of the problems in defining 'free will' I simply stick to the term 'agency' (the term 'free agency' was mentioned earlier but I have pretty much the same problems with that term as with free will, from what is the agency free?). I would say that the position of agency simply means that we, as agents, are responsible for our actions. I might have had a terrible upbringing (I didn't) that would have influenced my behaviour but I would still be culpable for crimes I committed, despite my protestation to Officer Krupke to the contrary. The only exception to this might be if a person is never exposed to a higher ideal of behaviour, but justice holds us all to the highest standards of society and not the norm. I can't imagine how society would work without the notion of agency, so I hold to it largely for pragmatic reasons.
Apologies for the misquote. You are right its Heisenberg. And no that principles isnt the only example its my favorite. The issue in basic is this, if all things in the scope of physics are predictable, other words if the future is knowable, then we are simply actors acting out a line of cause and effect. I hope that clarifies
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
