"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[fr0d0]

But you're responding to me who's essentially saying the same as you, like I'm disagreeing with you.

So freedom doesn't exist as a physical entity... I'm glad we cleared that one up!

[Edwardo Piet]

I disagreed with you saying I was being inconsistent.

[theVOID]

If there is no such thing as free will, then all action and reaction can be, to soem extent, predicted. Wouldn't this suggest that if we have suitable means of predicting a person's actions before they happen, we are obligated to prevent those actions, if they are a crime in the eyes of the law?

Things can already be predicted, it is already known, in this world even if this is an indeterministic one. But not 100% otherwise how would it be indeterministic? For things to be 100% predictable it would require a determinsitic world. And I am a hard incompatiblist not a hard determinist.

I don't deny determinism though. I don't know if ultimately, when it comes down to it, the quantum world is really deterministic. I don't know either way.... I don't commit belief to determinism or indeterminism I just see 'free will' as impossible either way.

And furthermore, what if the Police are determined to fail at preventing the criminal from committing his crime?

There is a chance that both Determinism and Indeterminism exist simultaneously on different scales, that is the general accepted reality these days in physics.

Victor Stenger has an equation for working out the systems that conform to either.

Essentially, if m(Mass)v(Velocity)d(Distance) > h(Plank length) then the system is probably too large to be affected by quantum indeterminacy.

[Edwardo Piet]

If, the non-quantum is deterministic, then the quantum can only be indeterministic as in "unpredictable by science"? We are discussing one universe. The laws in it cannot contradict.

[Rayaan]

I believe in free will because the fact that I realize that there are different choices to act upon means that I'm free to make a decision without being completely determined to do so. I believe in free will even though I think that most of our lives are deterministic. The only thing is that there are different degrees of free will depending on the situation that we're dealing with. For example, I don't think that I had a free will to post in this thread or not to post in this thread. It was determined that I would post here simply because of my desire to post and other factors which led to me to see this topic. But maybe I did have free will when I was thinking what to write here and how to form the sentences in this post because it requires a lot more thought than a simple yes-or-no question. So, some of our actions are deterministic and others are less deterministic. But we are not completely deterministic beings.

After making this post, it almost seems as if everything that I wrote was determined to be written in the same, exact order. But during my thought process, I did feel that I was thinking freely. And if my thoughts are free, then my actions can also be free because many of our actions are an effect of our thoughts. Of course, I wouldn't disagree that there could be a strong level of determinism in our thoughts as well.

[Edwardo Piet]

I believe in free will because the fact that I realize that there are different choices to act upon means that I'm free to make a decision without being completely determined to do so.

One day you have option X. Another day you have option Y. So in that sense you have "different choices".

But at any given moment that moment is by definition that moment so how can you choose it to be otherwise? To generalize my point above into acting as if you can change what is happening at the moment it is happening to something else: is impossible by definition.

We live in the past, present, and future. The past is what has happened, so, as the vast majority or people understand I'm sure: You can't change that. Many say you can change the future. But the future means "what will happen" even if it isn't determined. You can't change that. How can you change whatever will happen to whatever won't happen? The future is whatever will happen, absolutely whatever that is, so you can't change the future either.

And the present is already present. The moment you think you have changed it it has already become the past. So how can you change that?

As theVOID says, I don't believe in free will because I don't believe we are acausal.

Futhermore though, if the universe itself is acausal (in the sense that it is probabilistic and some things are just an awful lot more likely than others and so that makes it seem as if cause and effect is more straight forward than it is) and we are naturally part of the universe, part of nature, how would we be able to break the acausal rules, whatever they are, and be self-causing agents?

[Rayaan]

We live in the past, present, and future. The past is what has happened, so, as the vast majority or people understand I'm sure: You can't change that. Many say you can change the future. But the future means "what will happen" even if it isn't determined. You can't change that. How can you change whatever will happen to whatever won't happen? The future is whatever will happen, absolutely whatever that is, so you can't change the future either.

The future means that something will happen but not exactly what will happen, doesn't it? If so then how does it mean that we don't have free will?

And the present is already present. The moment you think you have changed it it has already become the past. So how can you change that?

If you think about the present time at every moment in the smallest scale possible, it does seem that we have no control to change what is happening. But on a quantum level, time behaves differently and there might even be closed-timelike curves which could possibly allow our minds to break away from a causal chain of events. Maybe free will is something that happens so quickly that we don't realize it before it becomes the past.

So, there might be a certain degree of free will existing at every moment of time in the present, but it escapes our awareness as soon as an action is made.

Futhermore though, if the universe itself is acausal (in the sense that it is probabilistic and some things are just an awful lot more likely than others and so that makes it seem as if cause and effect is more straight forward than it is) and we are naturally part of the universe, part of nature, how would we be able to break the acausal rules, whatever they are, and be self-causing agents?

I think it's possible for free will and a causal universe to both exist at the same time. Why? Because the laws of nature doesn't always have to be limited to creating things which are also causal themselves. Also, we don't know if the universe is 100% causal or not. If that's the case, then it's possible that there are unknown quantum laws operating in the universe which could allow beings with free will here on earth like you, me, and everyone else. Why not?

[theVOID]

If, the non-quantum is deterministic, then the quantum can only be indeterministic as in "unpredictable by science"? We are discussing one universe. The laws in it cannot contradict.

No, it can be indeterministic as in intrinsically random, however the actual probabilities fall into regions that can lead to entirely predictable classical determinism. Your neuron and chemical systems are too large to be effected by indeterminacy, the effects literally wash out at larger scales and when considering the entire object the larger it gets the higher the chances of it complying exactly as causally determined .

There is no contradiction, the effects of indeterminacy even out at larger scales and have no impact on the pathways of objects of a certain size. There is no change of indeterminacy effecting the trajectory of a baseball in motion or the journey of a neurochemical on a synaptic pathway, because the overwhelming number of quantum events average out into an extremely specific and determined position and momentum.

It's the same principle with radiometric dating, the chances of decay on average are 1 in 10^x/t . If X is 10 and t is 1 hour it means that on average in a group of 10^10 particles 1 will decay per hour, but there will be decays that happen proportionally to the mean, a very very small number may decay in 1x10^1/t or 1X10^20/t but the average will be determinable with 100% accuracy, and you will get as a fact a decay rate of 1/10^10/t.

So systems of a certain size become gradually more determined up to the point where the object is a size where mdv>h and from that point there is no indeterminacy at all.

[Watson]

Things can already be predicted, it is already known, in this world even if this is an indeterministic one. But not 100% otherwise how would it be indeterministic? For things to be 100% predictable it would require a determinsitic world. And I am a hard incompatiblist not a hard determinist.

I don't deny determinism though. I don't know if ultimately, when it comes down to it, the quantum world is really deterministic. I don't know either way.... I don't commit belief to determinism or indeterminism I just see 'free will' as impossible either way.

I'm kind of lost here...I don't know the definition of compatibilist or determinist, so could you please, in your own words define them for me? I feel like it would un-muddy the waters quite a bit for the purpose of this discussion.

And furthermore, what if the Police are determined to fail at preventing the criminal from committing his crime?

An interesting proposition, of course! 'What, then?' certainly is the question. Perhaps they still have a choice on how they handle the situation, but are destined to completely fail regardless of what method they choose to go about it? Who knows?


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Not to 'some extent'. Given sufficient knowledge and processing power it can be predicted entirely. Your omnipotent friend would be able to do this (which he shouldn't be able to given free will).

Being able to predict actions and reactions is not the same as directing them to happen a certain way, only directing them to happen in the first place. Imagine a scientist performing an experiment in which he mixes two chemicals. He is a super-being, intelligent on a level that he is capable of predicting every single result that could occur from mixing the two chemicals, ad infinitum.

Does he control what happens to the chemicals? Not past the original mixing of the chemicals themselves; he knows what will happen and what could, but he does not control the outcome. He does, however, have plans for what to do in the event that any of the infinite results occurs. And the capability of executing his response perfectly.

Oh wait. We're not talking about a scientist anymore, are we?

If we could be certain that someone will commit a crime should we prevent it? i'm sure we already do than whenever we have sufficient reason to believe they will.

Why would we not want to act? The risk is too great not to.

But suppose we are not certain. We are unaware of all the variables. Any number of things could happen to change the course of events leading to the crime, and possibly unwind the crime completely to it's end. Are we not going to allow people their right to act freely upon these variables? That is infringing upon freedom, regardless of the safety it brings. And I'd rather be free than safe.

1. If they had the ability there would be no deterministic certainty, so your other example can't quite be applied. We could say they are likely to commit this act, and that would be all. That is what we currently do in numerous circumstances.

a.) What is deterministic certainty?

b.)When we are talking about people, however, this is not what we do. Scienctific experiments/theories, yes. We go with what is most likely because we have no way of proving without a smidgen of doubt that what we are positing is true. However, when the number of variables is as great as it is with something like time and it's many possibilities, we cannot be even close to 'certain.' We don't know that a potential murderer absolutely will murder someone.

You are supposing that conspiracy to commit murder and murder are one in the same. Yes, someone who has set things up so that another will die and failed can be arrested for conspiracy. But what about someone who has planned a murder, set everything up for murder...and then decided last minute not to go through with it, deconstructing their plans? Should they, too, be arrested? And what about crimes of passion? If someone is predicted to kill someone else in a blind fury, then stops at the last second...should they be arrested and tried for murder?

2. Is it worth the risk, letting the bomber get all the way to the train station and then waiting just to make sure he doesn't change his mind? The risks are unacceptable, even more so than allowing the potential criminal to change his mind at the last minuet.

This type of crime is completely different, though. It isn't comparable to something like murder(although murder is still commited.)

3. Conspiring to commit crime is still a crime, and they are still guilty of that even if they were to change their minds. If it was a spontaneous act then it would be more difficult to judge, but then again if we knew of some impending causal action than the person themselves are not currently aware of then we need only discourage them sufficiently.

See above.

Given we don't have the ability to predict these things and likely never will i see little point in worrying about it too much. It's certainly an interesting question.

I'm arguing for free will here, though. So my point is, if there is no free will, then predicting that crimes will happen and then apprehending their perpetrator's before they have even commited said crime is permissable. And as I've demonstrated, it simply isn't fair, just, and violates human rights. Which is teh exact opposite of the law.

How is it a violation of human rights? Conspiring to commit crime is a crime. Do i have the right to walk up to your front door with a gun and threaten you as long as I change my mind before it gets too serious?

If I was not attacked or hurt in any way, yes. You don't have the right, per se, but you have the ability to do so without fear of the law. Unless I decided to press charges for mental anguish.

What if it was known for certain that i would kill you tomorrow, would it be a violation of my rights to stop me, or a violation to your rights to protection?

Who could know for absolute certain that you would kill me?

It would be more immoral for society to allow your death than it would to prevent my action.

In the time between the day before my death, and the day you kill me, there are an infinite number of variables or events that could occur which might lead you to change your mind about killing me. Should you still be arrested, even if halfway through the day you are suppsoed to kill me, you change your mind and don't do it? I'd feel safer living in a country where I am allowed to freely choose whether or not to commit a crime, than in a country where I am arrested for a crime I haven't even commited yet.

Freedom>safety.

Also, predicting and preventing crime in a deterministic universe has a much lower change of wrongfully convicting people. If we are serious about preventing crime then determinism works in our favor.

Again, please defin for me in your own words what determinism is. I'm not savvy on there things, and once you have, I can respond appropriately.

Your miracles never existed, science just put a damper on ignoranance.

Bullshit. You don't know what a miracle is.

[theVOID]

Not to 'some extent'. Given sufficient knowledge and processing power it can be predicted entirely. Your omnipotent friend would be able to do this (which he shouldn't be able to given free will).

Being able to predict actions and reactions is not the same as directing them to happen a certain way, only directing them to happen in the first place. Imagine a scientist performing an experiment in which he mixes two chemicals. He is a super-being, intelligent on a level that he is capable of predicting every single result that could occur from mixing the two chemicals, ad infinitum.

*Sigh* It's already apparent that you are arguing a strawman, but let's continue.

1) Not all rights are equal, when they are in conflict then a decision must be made in favor of the right with the greatest weight.

2) If we have reasons to believe that a crime is going to be committed we have reason to prevent it. Our preemptive abilities are not absolute, but they tend to promote more and stronger desires than they thwart. My desire to kill you thwarts more and stronger desires (every desire you have in life plus the desires that others have involving you) than my desire to kill you does.

Suppose i have the right to decide whether or not i kill you, and you have the right to life, my right is less important than your own.

If we were certain that I would kill you then it would be a no brainier that the moral thing to do is to stop your murder.

3) All decisions in life are a cost/risk assessment. We are morally obligated to take the risk, given sufficient reason, that will tend to promote in more desires being promoted than thwarted.

If we were not certain, but had good reason to believe that i would kill you, then it would be immoral not to take action. The risk of my killing you has an unacceptable chance of thwarting more and stronger desires than it promotes. Because my right to freedom of action is less weighty than your freedom of life it stands that when these rights are in conflict that one has to give.

4) Because we lack the knowledge and predictive powers required to have deterministic certainty, there is no difference at all between running a risk assessment in either a free-will, indeterministic or deterministic situation.

But suppose we are not certain. We are unaware of all the variables.

There is no need to suppose it, it's a fact.

Any number of things could happen to change the course of events leading to the crime, and possibly unwind the crime completely to it's end. Are we not going to allow people their right to act freely upon these variables? That is infringing upon freedom, regardless of the safety it brings. And I'd rather be free than safe.

Again, we must have a risk assessment in each situation, being absolute is going to get you nowhere. If, all else being equal, the risk of your right to live being subverted is sufficiently supported, then there is a reason to subvert my right to freedom of decision.

a.) What is deterministic certainty?

Strange question, everything in determinism is certain. Our ability to know these certainties is not.

b.)When we are talking about people, however, this is not what we do. Scienctific experiments/theories, yes. We go with what is most likely because we have no way of proving without a smidgen of doubt that what we are positing is true. However, when the number of variables is as great as it is with something like time and it's many possibilities, we cannot be even close to 'certain.' We don't know that a potential murderer absolutely will murder someone.

Of course not. This is your strawman re-emerging. This issue is irrespective of determinism vs free will because in either situation are predictive powers are not sufficient in achieving certainty. It again falls to a risk assessment.

You are supposing that conspiracy to commit murder and murder are one in the same.

No i am not, they are different crimes with different punishments. We can not preemptively charge someone with murder, we can charge them with conspiring to murder, assuming we have sufficient reasons to suspect that is the case.

Yes, someone who has set things up so that another will die and failed can be arrested for conspiracy. But what about someone who has planned a murder, set everything up for murder...and then decided last minute not to go through with it, deconstructing their plans? Should they, too, be arrested?

That is conspiracy to murder plain and simple, it is treated as such. There is no problem here.

And what about crimes of passion? If someone is predicted to kill someone else in a blind fury, then stops at the last second...should they be arrested and tried for murder?

If the crime is spontaneous then we have no way of knowing it will happen, so there is not sufficient time or data for either risk assessment or action.

If we are certain, then we know that they will not commit the crime. Since spontaneous crimes are not conspiracies then we have no reason for charging them for either. You cannot predict a spontaneous murder, and if we are certain of the course of events then we would not have predicted a murder.

2. Is it worth the risk, letting the bomber get all the way to the train station and then waiting just to make sure he doesn't change his mind? The risks are unacceptable, even more so than allowing the potential criminal to change his mind at the last minuet.

This type of crime is completely different, though. It isn't comparable to something like murder(although murder is still commited.)

There is no difference, given any situation where the chances of the crime being committed are sufficiently high, it becomes immoral not to act.

Given we don't have the ability to predict these things and likely never will i see little point in worrying about it too much. It's certainly an interesting question.

I'm arguing for free will here, though. So my point is, if there is no free will, then predicting that crimes will happen and then apprehending their perpetrator's before they have even commited said crime is permissable. And as I've demonstrated, it simply isn't fair, just, and violates human rights. Which is teh exact opposite of the law.

If we are certain that the crime will happen, or have sufficient reason to believe it will, then inaction is immoral.

You are completely wrong about it not being fair, as i pointed out your right to live is greater than my right to freely chose to kill you.

How is it a violation of human rights? Conspiring to commit crime is a crime. Do i have the right to walk up to your front door with a gun and threaten you as long as I change my mind before it gets too serious?

If I was not attacked or hurt in any way, yes. You don't have the right, per se, but you have the ability to do so without fear of the law. Unless I decided to press charges for mental anguish.

So you've admitted i don't have the right to threaten you, fine i'm glad that is sorted.

If you were to know for certain, or to have sufficient reason to believe that i was going to beat a group of infants to death with a bat would it not be immoral for you to do nothing? Even if i changed my mind at the last second, would you be unjustified in claiming the risk was sufficient?

What if it was known for certain that i would kill you tomorrow, would it be a violation of my rights to stop me, or a violation to your rights to protection?

Who could know for absolute certain that you would kill me?

It's a hypothetical. Assuming we had certainty, if i was going to kill you would it be wrong to prevent it?

Even without certainty, if we had sufficient reason would it be wrong to prevent it?

If i walked up to you with a gun and gave you every reason to believe that i would kill you would it be wrong for you to stop me?

It would be more immoral for society to allow your death than it would to prevent my action.

In the time between the day before my death, and the day you kill me, there are an infinite number of variables or events that could occur which might lead you to change your mind about killing me. Should you still be arrested, even if halfway through the day you are suppsoed to kill me, you change your mind and don't do it? I'd feel safer living in a country where I am allowed to freely choose whether or not to commit a crime, than in a country where I am arrested for a crime I haven't even commited yet.

1) If there was the possibility that something will happen to change the course then THERE IS NO DETERMINISM. As such there is no sense in talking about the implications of something being certain to happen.

2) If it was CERTAIN that i was going to kill you it would be wrong not to act.

3) If we had GOOD REASON to think that i was going to kill you it would be wrong not to act.

Determining what constitutes good reason is difficult, but the other implications are simply the moral choice because they tend to be the ones that promote more desires than they thwart.

You can't just reject the terrorist example as it epitomizes the situation. Again, is it wrong to stop a terrorist if you have good reason to believe they will commit an act of terror?

Freedom>safety.

Then go unlock all the prisoners and never arrest anything again.

Also, predicting and preventing crime in a deterministic universe has a much lower change of wrongfully convicting people. If we are serious about preventing crime then determinism works in our favor.

Again, please defin for me in your own words what determinism is. I'm not savvy on there things, and once you have, I can respond appropriately.

So you still don't know what determinism is up to this point? Surely this would be something to get out of the way before you make all these arguments?

A deterministic universe is one in which there is no events that are not caused by other events. There are no decisions that you can make that are not directly caused by the sum of events up to that point. Essentially, if we took a snapshot of the world where every aspect of the history was known up until that point, then no matter how many instances of that moment we played out, the same decisions would still be made.

It might feel like we have free-will in making decisions, but in reality what we are doing is making a decision based on the sum of events in the past up till that point. You might consider different options but the decision that you arrive at is the decision you would always arrive at given multiple identical instances of that same moment.

In other words, every decision you make (even the decisions between decisions) are entirely caused by the summation of all relevant events, emotions and knowledge. To say we have free will is to say that there is an aspect of our minds that is not affected by causality. This is to place part of our minds beyond the causal universe. There is absolutely no evidence in indication of, nor any logical necessity requiring that part of the mind is outside of the causal universe.

Causal in this instance can be either deterministic or indeterministic, it doesn't make a difference. The difference between the two would be to say of determinism "Given absolute knowledge of the initial state of the universe we can predict every subsequent event without error" and indeterminism "(Some) Events are truly random and as such we can never know for certain how the next moment will happen".

Free will is not possible Determinism and not necessarily indeterminism (though they are compatible).

Essentially free-will decisions are acausal (without cause)

Your miracles never existed, science just put a damper on ignoranance.

Bullshit. You don't know what a miracle is.

A miracle is an event that cannot happen within the realm of natural law. Have you any known instances of something that cannot have happened within the application of natural law? Of course not. Every known phenomenon (that can be shown to have happened) has turned out to have a natural explanation.

Not only that, but we have no evidence that they are even possible, so until sufficiently demonstrated there is no reason to conclude that miracles exist.

The person making the positive claim of existence has the burden of proof.