RE: Does Free Will actually exist? Is there a way to tell?
January 28, 2015 at 2:54 pm
(This post was last modified: January 28, 2015 at 3:33 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 28, 2015 at 1:43 pm)Tonus Wrote: I understand and agree with that. I just think that the issue can keep a person going in circles. Over the course of our lives we change in many ways. It may be a big change (switching ideological sides, for example) or a small change (deciding to change the flavor of coffee you buy). These are almost certainly influenced by something. Does that mean that we have free will (we are able to make changes based on new input) or that we do not (we are guided by that input and don't really have a choice)? Without the ability to go back and replay those moments, we end up with a solipsism, IMO.If we could answer the question definitively it would be the most important discovery in the history of mankind for social science. Imagine the increased effectiveness of rehab or cessation programs, the changes that could be made to both law enforcement and our penal system. Imagine how a better understanding of why we do the things we do, the things we might call "choices" could affect the personal relationships of every human being on the planet. Divorces, abusive relationships, absentee parents...all made decidedly less jagged and unpredictable. The flow of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, advertising, education, soooo much.....it's important. Try to imagine all of the applications of a robust understanding of human behavior and "choice" based upon quantifiable metrics, rather than magic. We've already taken the first steps into all of this......so we clearly understand the value.
The only time we go round and round in circles is when we reasseart and redress our intitial assertions rather than go where the evidence leads us. For example, you mentioned that we change over time, and then go on to say "maybe that's evidence of free will - no, that's evidence of change over time. If -change over time- might be evidence for free will then perhaps evolution is evidence of natures "free will"? Our inability to go back and replay things does not lead us to solipsism, unless you're a solipsist with regards to every single concept you hold and every moment prior this this one, which is, incidentally, now lost to time as I type it - including the concept of solipsism...
Quote:Everything we learn about how our minds work can be fitted into that framework so that we can either easily answer the question or not answer it at all.I'm not sure that there are any easy answers regarding our minds..and similarly I don't think it's easy to simply -not answer-, regardless of the framework.
Quote: I suppose we could assign a percent chance to any decisions we make, but to me any percentage higher than zero would mean that we have free will.Hardly, just as being able to predict every choice we made with 100% certainty would not actually prove that we -didn't- have free will. Whats being proven in either case is the effectiveness of our predictive tools.
Quote: Or it could be argued that we have "30% free will" and "70% external influence" affecting our decisions, which might be a valid approach in the end, though I think it would prove that we do have the freedom to make our own decisions.How about this, we have no free will, but we can exert influence in 30% of the stuff we think is "free will", and the other 70% has no wiggle room? That our influence may not be magic in a bottle (or, in this case, in a skull) isn't such a radical suggestion, is it? 30% unmoved mover of mind doesn't cut it for me, I want to see a single percent of unmoved mover before I consider whether or not 30% is appropriate. It seems as though free will is standing in for "internal influence" in that ratio above in any case...as though the metric for what was or wasn't free will was what was or wasn't external. I see nothing about "internal influence" that would lead one to describe it as "free will". The stuff that comes from outside isn't free will, but the stuff that comes from inside is?
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