Do animals have free Will?

[genkaus]

But you can help it if you realize you're rigging the game, which you are. Taking an ability that we've determined to be a very human ability and then using it as the criteria for a concept like "free will" is about as crooked as the house can get. Of course animals that are not human beings don't have free will if the criteria for free will can be reduced to being human animals.

(It may be that this is exactly the criteria.. but we have extremely strong reasons to suspect that we're engaging in a behavior that is also very human, and also most often completely wrong, all of this without being able to establish that there is such a thing as "free will" in the first place...btw)

Like I said before, when I say free-will, I mean volition, that is capacity to make decisions with reference to knowledge, motivations, thoughts and actions. If you think that this definition is rigging the game in favor of humanity, then propose your own and we can discuss that.

FYI, simply defining free-will as the capacity to make a choice would be incomplete. You also have to point out what it means to have made a choice, i.e. how do we determine if a creature has made a choice and that the action undertaken was not a necessary consequence of its biology and conditioning.

[The Grand Nudger]

Np, if that's your definition then a very large number of creatures on this planet have free will. If your definition hinges on levels of this ability that increase on a scale towards human beings before being classified as "free will", then yes, that's rigging the game.

Let me ask you this. In relation to a wolf, just how competent are you at hunting deer by making "decisions with reference to knowledge, motivations, thoughts and actions"? Is this game rigged in favor of the wolf?

Can you demonstrate that our own relative level or grade of "free will" is not "a necessary consequence of its(our) biology and conditioning"? If you're referring to relative ability (and our measure for that is our brains ability and stage of development) then I don't see how you could avoid marking down human beings as creatures that act according to a necessary consequence of our own biology and conditioning. Since that's exactly how we understand our brains to operate (by consequence of biology and conditioning)

[Godscreated]

I believe the real problem in this discussion is choice vs. freewill. I train dogs to obey certain commands, yet at times they will refuse to do so, this is a deliberate choice. As for what the reasons, I'm not always sure, I do not see it as freewill. Min added to Tack's analogy that animals kill for a reason (survival), and man kills for a reason (war, hate, self defense, law enforcement and ect.) or for no reason (mentally ill).
Rhythm wrote that animals such as the chimps and domesticated cats kill for no reason, I disagree. The domesticated cat will kill mice, birds, rabbits and ect. and leave them lying around uneaten, they do this out of instinct, an instinct that's been altered because of their domestication and thus will leave a kill uneaten. As for the chimps no one has proven they kill other chimps for no reason, the video he posted shows chimps in cooperation which IMO shows they had a reason.

The above shows all had a choice except for the mentally ill person, thus choices were made both by animals and man. The difference that I see in this, that man made moral choices and animals made instinctual choices. Moral choices = freewill Instinctual choices = no freewill

[jediphobic]

Free will is an occasionally useful concept in studying societies, and even individual actions, but all it is, is an approximation. When you get right down to it, we have no more free will than a rock falling through space can will itself to change directions. Free will is an illusion that can help us to understand and conceptualize many things, but that doesn't make it true any more than Newton's laws are true representations of physical interactions.

[Minimalist]

the video he posted shows chimps in cooperation which IMO shows they had a reason.

Damn.


I hate it when we agree.

[The Grand Nudger]

Moral decisions and instinctual decisions? GC...instincts are things we do without making decisions. You don't decide to pull your hand out of fire, you do it by instinct. When a cat just lets a bird waltz right by, is it making an "instinctual choice" to ignore it's instincts, or a "moral choice"..lol? Before you comeback with domestication..yes, wild predators also sport hunt, and they also decide not to chase prey sometimes, for reasons they are incapable of explaining to us themselves.

(again, for the record, my choice of words was meant to convey the tendency that people have to call acts of violence "senseless" or "without reason". Probably poor composition. If human wars or violence can be said to be senseless or without reason, or Min, if "godtoldmeto" isn't a reason...well, why not chimp wars, chimp violence?)

[Godscreated]

the video he posted shows chimps in cooperation which IMO shows they had a reason.

Damn.


I hate it when we agree.

That's OK it want hurt long.

[AthiestAtheist]

"other than their nature"

What is that supposed to mean? How can anyone (or anything) do something other than their nature? Can you give an example of something humans do that is "against their nature".

Well I would define it as really anyone doing something they don't want to or wouldn't normally do because someone else makes them. For example dogs can be trained to do things and not do things, just like how the Christian church et al. train their followers...

[The Grand Nudger]

Does an orangutan make a moral or instinctual decision when it decides to rape a member of it's group?

Disturbing Behaviors of the Orangutan Maggioncalda and Sapolsky, Scientific American, June 2002

[Godscreated]

Moral decisions and instinctual decisions? GC...instincts are things we do without making decisions. You don't decide to pull your hand out of fire, you do it by instinct. When a cat just lets a bird waltz right by, is it making an "instinctual choice" to ignore it's instincts, or a "moral choice"..lol? Before you comeback with domestication..yes, wild predators also sport hunt, and they also decide not to chase prey sometimes, for reasons they are incapable of explaining to us themselves.

(again, for the record, my choice of words was meant to convey the tendency that people have to call acts of violence "senseless" or "without reason". Probably poor composition. If human wars or violence can be said to be senseless or without reason, or Min, if "godtoldmeto" isn't a reason...well, why not chimp wars, chimp violence?)

Yes, young predators do kill to sharpen their skills and rarely do they leave the kill uneaten. That practice would be detrimental to their survival. If your fire analogy were true our instinct would be not putting our hand in the fire. People do burn and cut themselves on purpose, thus overriding an instinct, which in most cases would indicate mental illness. Some people will put themselves in harms way to protect others, there are a few reasons people put themselves in harms way, and it mostly has to do with loving others, even strangers. I would not consider this to be a mental illness, I would say that it's a choice that is stronger than instinct in some people.
Chimps that ignore their instincts and do something senseless are probably wired wrong and would be a determent to themselves and their troop. Thus through natural selection this bad wiring would or should be eliminated.