"Free Will" Belief/Disbelief Poll

[theVOID]

Your decisions are based on everything you are at that point in time, from your knowledge to your emotions and preferences and desires and biology and psychology, you could not possibly chose to act differently because you lack the capacity to not be yourself. There is no violation, you simply act as your nature dictates.

Any free will demands that our minds overcome causality, and i don't buy any of the arguments for that conclusion.

[Minimalist]

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? This denies people the ability, capacity, and fundamental right to make split-second decisions based entirely on internal changes.

Ah, Watson....this must be your lucky day. You've made a good point.

Consider that this was exactly what Dubya ( and his English lap dog Blair) did in Iraq. They asserted (falsely) that Iraq had the capability to attack the West and therefore moved to prevent such an attack before it was made.


To put this in a more personal context let us suppose that a cop answers a call to a home and finds you standing there with a bloody baseball bat and nearby are a man, his wife, and children with their heads bashed in. You tell the cop that you had a dispute with the fellow a few years before and recently became concerned that he might get a gun and shoot you. Therefore, you brought your baseball bat and took care of the matter yourself.

I ( and I suspect you ) would expect the cop to instantly arrest you as a mass murderer. There do seem to be some people around who think the cop should pat you on the back and say "good thinking."

[theVOID]

Interestingly enough, I just watched the Minority Report(or part of it, anyway) and I thought it was a rather interesting moral question for those who do not beleive in free will.(Although the movie itself is only decent.)

If there is no such thing as free will, then all action and reaction can be, to soem extent, predicted.

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).

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?

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.

This denies people the ability, capacity, and fundamental right to make split-second decisions based entirely on internal changes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Basically, if there is no such thing as free will, then this kind of pre-emptive stoppage of crime is permissable. Even though it is a violation of human rights.

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? 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?

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

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.

Contrarily, if such action is predictable to a point,(excluding the aforementioned split-second changes) then the way of things would seem to suggest that their is a pre-ordained structure or 'plan' for the future. It might be considered a scientifically plausible kind of 'Fate.' "Science has stolen most of our miracles."

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

And Determinism is fate.

[Edwardo Piet]

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?

[fr0d0]

Peoples actions are predicted, unfairly so sometimes, because to be just, you have to take into consideration the possibility for a person to act contrary to their observed pattern of behaviour yet be consistent with their will. That's because we are free to act as our will dictates.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well if they can do different to what is predicted then it's not genuinely predicted.

There is only freedom from things. Freedom in itself doesn't exist. Absolute submission to a dictating will that can't dictate otherwise: That's the opposite of free will.

[fr0d0]

Prediction is based upon limited knowledge and does need to be correct. Limiting someone to actioned based upon previous actions is unfair, and doesn't take into account influences on the will that may lead a person to act counter to their history.

You are a free agent, so freedom does exist. You just don't have a free will.

[Edwardo Piet]

Physical freedom exists but that's it. My will is not free. My will is what drives me. I am only free in the sense a car driven by an unfree robot is free..... I am physically free. A bird has freedom in the sense it has the ability or "freedom" to fly. But it are we are both not free in the sense that what actually drives us, our wills, aren't free.

A man driving unconstrained by worries in the wilderness, driving offtrack and whereever he so wishes may be "free" in that sense. But he can't will what he wishes. The question can always be asked "What's driving the driver?" if that question is not bothered to be asked, we top at a dead end acting as if we are self-causing, which is ridiculous.

Prediction if accurate prediction by definition can't be predicted wrongly.

[fr0d0]

You said that freedom doesn't exist, and now you're saying it does. Accurate prediction can only be known posthumously. Who are we arguing against BTW?

[Edwardo Piet]

I said that freedom doesn't intrinsically exist. It can only exist in the sense of an agent being free from something. It can't exist by itself. That's what I meant by physical freedom.

I was arguing against Watson, saying his argument doesn't apply to "no free will" but only to determinism. Determinism implies no free will if you're an incompatabilist like me. But indeterminism doesn't imply that free will does exist. Free will is logically impossible either way as far as I'm concerned.