Is free will real?

[Dystopia]

I have mixed views on free will... Honestly, it's not a subject I think about and I don't give a damn if it exists or not, however from what I can remember that I studied in highschool (better than nothing I guess) I could sum up 4 possible orientations:

Indeterminism - Everything is random and happens out of randomness, all events are non linear and have no explanation, they happen because they do, motivated by a caused that happened to be there, but if it wasn't that wouldn't have happened, or would have happened differently

Determinism - All of you are familiar with this, everything has a cause, is pre-determined, and we have little to no control over all naturalistic events that occur

Moderate determinism - Everything has a cause, but we get to make a choice - We are conditioned by biological, social, legal and ethical factors as complex beings, there are many things we don't control, that happen and can't be prevented, but we do get a margin of choice from time to time, sometimes more often. I pick this orientation

Complete freedom - We are free to do what we want and we can choose freely all the events that take part. For obvious reasons I don't think free will would be infinite (if it happens to exist) so I dismiss this orientation.

As a law student with preference for criminal law, I must assume some free will exists otherwise the whole legal system, that punishes those who don't abide by the law, would be useless - Since people wouldn't have control over their actions and therefore no one could punish them, since what happened had to happen. It's basically a necessity and letting go the concept of free will would have devastating consequences, I must accept it, at least as a fiction, I can't prove free will exists but I assume, at least for legal and social matters, that it does, and I plan my life according to it, as we all do to an extent.

I think that going into the pro and cons debate, the best argument for free will (whether it's complete or limited) is that people feel free daily, they are able to make conscious decisions and change their mind, they feel the power to choose often and prefer X to Y or A to B, it's something we humans feel due to our rationality and put into practice, although it's complicated to explain; the best con argument would be that There's no evidence that proves free will exists from an empirical standpoint

In the end, all I can say is that I don't know, free will may exist or not, but I assume, at least partially, that it does out of human necessity.

[Whateverist]

In the end, all I can say is that I don't know, free will may exist or not, but I assume, at least partially, that it does out of human necessity.[/align]

Yeah, either it does or nothing much rides on it .. since knowing that it didn't would leave you powerless to do anything about it.

[Brian37]

What do you think?

Not in a religious context no, that is just a woo cliche concocted by religious people.

In actual science at even to the Quantum level reality is nether chaos or order like people falsely assume as an "either/or" proposition. Reality is that it is both in an overlapping manor.

Like you can predict the conditions that lead to a hurricane but you cannot count the trillions of raindrops or chart their individual paths during the storm down to the millimeter.

[The Grand Nudger]

You won't find "Ferrarri particles" floating around either-and yet there are Ferrarris.

If there are no people to see the Ferrari, but rather a troupe of monkeys, is it still a Ferrari, or even a car?

Yup.

Or is it just a bunch of hard, shiny red stuff? You insist that the Ferrari exists. But it exists AS A FERRARI only to people.

As I said, that which we call a rose...

Do you think a snake looks at your mom and sees hugs and apple pie?

Unlikely.

Do you think amoeba look at your life and are jealous of your liberty?

Even more unlikely.

ALL these things are real only as ideas, and all these ideas are based on the context of the human experience-- what it feels like to live a human life. And this "what it's like" very clearly includes the sense that we are free agents, making willful decisions about how to live our lives.

Magicians pull rabbits out of the hats in our experience as well...very clearly. Something tells me you don't have trouble wielding a finer blade when it's hats and rabbits, rather than free will. Somethings going on there, yeah - something real is actually happening...but you probably don't think that the experience is indicative of reality, right? I think it's a pretty fair bet to accept that even though not everything we experience is actually -happening-..some of the things we experience are, and some of the things we experience -are happening- but most likely not -as we experience them-. There's just no all or nothing in this for me. Keep our experience of free will or toss it and apple pie, mom, hugs, liberty and shiny red cars remain untouched.

@Blackout, you wouldn't actually have to give up your legal system, and it;s likely that a serviceable justification already exists within your legal system even if there were no free will (and there would be - for those types of infractions which we don't figure free will factors into much - crimes of passion or strange shit done by damaged people). Instead of punishing you're simply protecting or removing. Instead of it being a choice they made it's an event which occurred and should be prevented if possible. It's not difficult at all, to conceive of law without free will. A bit different, but not always, and amusingly familiar in most scenarios.

[bennyboy]

If there are no people to see the Ferrari, but rather a troupe of monkeys, is it still a Ferrari, or even a car?

Yup.

Well, I don't see how we are going to get past this point, then. You are projecting your own context into the hypothetical experience of monkeys. However, that "reality" is not a reality for those monkeys-- they are not experiencing Ferrari-ness when they throw poo at the shiny red thing. An idea which works only in a local context (i.e. for humans but not for monkeys), but which does not generalize to ALL possible contexts, I would not confidently call "real." I would call it a context-based reality. And, of course, my next questions should be obvious-- is there such a thing as a reality which is not context-based in that it is dependent on the conceptualization of a living thing?

[The Grand Nudger]

Seeing as how close we are I don't think it's much of a projection. Apes sense a shiny red car, it's unlikely that monkeys will miss it.

"The shiny red thing" is a ferrari. They're throwing feces at it, in your example...so clearly it works and exists in both of our contexts, the car's existence doesn't depend upon any "human context" in the same way that the existence of a termite mound doesn't depend on a "termite context".

RE: that question.

Seems to be. Our senses seem to be referring to something external, the senses of other creatures seem to be referring to something external. Our senses often align where we would expect them to and differ where we would expect them to. The idea of the thing isn't the thing....commenting upon our idea or experience of something won't actually alter whatever that something is, whatever the idea is in reference to. I'd like to imagine my way into a mansion..and maybe a harem - but you can imagine how that's going to turn out. My little house wont sprout an east wing...and my wife won't be bringing any concubines to dinner. If I redefined my house to be a mansion and my wife to be a harem - I'll still have the same house and the same wife. If there weren't a reality independent of the conceptualization of a living thing then where/what would those living things be floating/in to come up with such concepts in the first place?

(I just have to get this out...you realize that this line of thought is basically rephrasing the tree in a forest question, right? Are my answers all that surprising? Of course the car exists whether or not someone is standing there looking at it or thinking about it. In the same way, the tree makes a sound, regardless of whether or not anyone is there to observe it. These things aren't as complicated as our discussion would imply. If we have to -make them complicated- to squeeze in some free willin magic, I'm calling shenanigans. Can you discuss free will without first mooting all experience? Is there some explanation of free will that doesn't rest upon the pillars that have led you to conclude that apple pie must not exist, if free will does not exist? On that last note.....if apple pie and free will are even remotely in the same boat - I'm issuing a challenge. I will bake you an applie pie, from scratch. I will get a picture of me holding the pie and a newspaper. In return, I expect to see you with a handful of free will. Or can we agree that some of your comparisons might be sloppy? Cars, moms, pies...I'll give you comfort, and liberty...that's a little harder to pin down...but you've jumped the shark on at least 50% of this Benny, and that's not a promising stat. )

[bennyboy]

Seeing as how close we are I don't think it's much of a projection. Apes sense a shiny red car, it's unlikely that monkeys will miss it.

"The shiny red thing" is a ferrari. They're throwing feces at it, in your example...so clearly it works and exists in both of our contexts, the car's existence doesn't depend upon any "human context" in the same way that the existence of a termite mound doesn't depend on a "termite context".

Nobody's disputing the existence of anything in this thread-- even free will. What is under dispute is the degree to which things exist as we experience them. The argument is that free will does NOT exist as we experience it-- a belief based not on our experiences, but on ideas we have about the nature of the universe and its constituent parts, the rules of which we must necessarily follow. In other words, since no part of the physicalist model of the universe allows for true freedom, we take that free will, which FEELS real, is not "really real"-- it is illusory.

I think we have to agree to disagree about what makes complex experiences "real" to an observer. You see a shiny red object, the monkeys see an object in the same point in space, and to you, this represents a shared experience. I see the ideas and feelings connected to the object, and know that monkeys can never share those ideas and feelings, and see that the experience of "Ferrari" cannot be shared with that species. Both species see shiny red objects, and those objects are real. But only people can really see "Ferrari."

[abaris]

You see a shiny red object, the monkeys see an object in the same point in space, and to you, this represents a shared experience. I see the ideas and feelings connected to the object, and know that monkeys can never share those ideas and feelings, and see that the experience of "Ferrari" cannot be shared with that species. Both species see shiny red objects, and those objects are real. But only people can really see "Ferrari."

So what's the real problem here? We simply have different perceptions. To use your example of monkeys staring at a Ferrari, it's still a car but doesn't have any meaning for them.

If we see a stick lying around near a termite mound, it's just a stick for us, but for the monkeys it's a tool to get at the yummie treats.

[The Grand Nudger]

The argument is that free will does NOT exist as we experience it-- a belief based not on our experiences, but on ideas we have about the nature of the universe and its constituent parts, the rules of which we must necessarily follow.

Whereas I think that free will -is- based on our experience, particularly the flaws we've discovered regarding that experience, and ways in which that sort of experience could be generated.

In other words, since no part of the physicalist model of the universe allows for true freedom, we take that free will, which FEELS real, is not "really real"-- it is illusory.

If true freedom is absolute freedom, or in the periphery - it's not an issue of whats allowed...we just don't find any of it (the model isn't a bouncer at a club - it doesn't kick things out because there's no room left - it tries to describe and explain). That won't make our shiny red car disappear, it won't be any less real. We'll just have the explanation wrong. We've been there plenty of times. When you use your "free will" you're doing something yeah? That something won't cease to be just because we answer a question about it the wrong way.

I think we have to agree to disagree about what makes complex experiences "real" to an observer. You see a shiny red object, the monkeys see an object in the same point in space, and to you, this represents a shared experience.

Sure...in that we are sharing an experience. Seems cut and dry. I have reasonable expectations of what a monkey can or cannot see. I think they'd notice a ferrari for essentially the same reasons that I would. We would both be looking at and seeing the same thing. Wherever a monkey thinks it sees a ferrari...I'm probably going to think I see one as well (and vv). Personally...I think that's probably because the ferrari is there - not a concept, or a collection of immaterial thoughstuff. A thing - dimensions, colors, angles......mass. (As a side note, some species of monkey toil under monochromacy - but so do some humans - again, monkeys and humans are so close - I think that you could make the point much better with other species, and I do think you're expressing a very interesting point - but as you know, you and I start at that place and go opposite directions from it.)

I see the ideas and feelings connected to the object, and know that monkeys can never share those ideas and feelings, and see that the experience of "Ferrari" cannot be shared with that species. Both species see shiny red objects, and those objects are real. But only people can really see "Ferrari."

I probably don't connect the same ideas and feelings to the brand that you do - so we can't share that experience either - not in any way more meaningful than you and a monkey might. You and I have separate experiences regarding the Ferrari, so I don't see why humans and monkeys wouldn't...but I also don't know what that would signify - isn't it to be expected? Isn't there also quite alot about the experience that we would expect points of commonality on? You think that your description of a ferrari (whatever that entails) is better than the monkey's, or likely more accurate. You can "really see" the ferrari - monkeys, you reckon, can't. That's suspect though...human thinks human description is better/more accurate than non-human description, surprise surprise. Monkeys would probably think that our descriptions of our experiences (or our experiences) were shit as well. We gain depth in one direction, they in another. We're both (the monkeys and ourselves) expressing toddlers experiences relative to each others frame of reference...nevertheless, the car remains - and remains unchanged by all of this consideration (or the lack thereof).

[bennyboy]

Sure...in that we are sharing an experience. Seems cut and dry. I have reasonable expectations of what a monkey can or cannot see. I think they'd notice a ferrari for essentially the same reasons that I would. We would both be looking at and seeing the same thing.

I think this is a philosophical question. The question is whether we both see the thing the same way-- and if not, can either the monkeys or I be said to see what is real? Or is the nature of what we see more a comment on monkeyness and humanity than the actual physical reality of the car?

As I see it, the monkeys and I are viewing the shiny red object in different contexts. To a monkey, a Ferrari in the desert is really a suprising object to be hooted at and have poo thrown on it. To us, the Ferrari is really an upper-class brand-name item worthy of jealousy or at least wonder. But neither of these contexts represents the physical reality?

So who's right? What is the object, really? A collection of particles? Maybe, but since that definition is true for all things we know of, it means nothing. Is it really a Ferrari? If yes, what exactly makes this object a Ferrari, rather than "Oog oog, shiny red, must throw poo."

You say it's still a car, or still a Ferrari-- but not to the monkeys. They do not see that it's a Ferrari. They do not understand (presumably) that it's a car, or a vehicle, or a machine. But this doesn't matter-- because none of those labels really describes a physical reality.