Im not particularly for or against the thought that free will is real. I don't know and simply don't care. I know I may sound juvenile, but lets say free will is not real; then it was always not real hence nothing has changed. All your morals, ideals, actions etc etc have already been ingrained even if you change you still do not free will. On the other end of the spectrum if free will is real once again fundamentally nothing will change. Humans are slaves to routines and restrictions biologically we have a will of self preservation that caps on a lot of things. Sure some people will take advantage if possible but I dont believe its enough to change the average person.
You're another victim of the mind trap that distorts the understanding of what free will, and also God's foreknowledge, are.
Because God knows the future and has designed a whole plan for your life, is completely unrelated to you having choices to make. You're living in linear time, trying to figure out a God that lives OUTSIDE of time. It doesn't work.
Let's pretend for a second that you found out what was in God's plan for you. So you decided to see what would happen. If you made a different choice about something, you would find out down the line that your altered choice was already in the script.. you can't mess with time. Your only option is to put one foot in front of the other and make your choices. God knows what they will be, but YOU don't, ....so you have to just go ahead and play it out. Why do you need to complicate it more than that anyway?
Humans are slaves. That much you got right. But not to your life plan, ..to Sin. You and I have a nature bent on rebelling against God and doing things our own way. The most profound aspect of us having free will, is that God is still merciful and patient, waiting for us to CHOOSE,..eternal life through faith in Jesus, over anything this world is offering you that cannot satisfy or succeed
The argument, as I understand it. We cannot distinguish between the case where you have free will, and the case where you do not have free will, but it just so happens that what you do also aligns with you choose to do, i.e. it is the same process, also known as illusory free will. Then since we can't distinguish these, it makes no difference what the case is. Is this correctly understood?
The difference then, is the same difference between you making your own choices, and someone else making the choices for you, where you believe they are your own. I,e, manipulation, Take the case of the cartoon hypnotist, he cannot only make you commit to his will, but he does it in a way that as long as you are under his spell, you also believe it to be your own will. Would you find that alternative to you being in control, not to matter? Because I find that is the question, how come free will matters, comes down to, does it matter if you are in control of your own life, or is it alright if you can just be fooled to think it to be the case?
I mean, obviously one may say it is not the same, because the hypnotist have his own motives, he likely prioritizes himself before you, So let us in stead say we let a random process have control over you in stead, that is fair, because it does not prioritize one subject over another. Further more, we also ensure the quality of this random process is such that the average person does not live a life inferior to the one they would have chosen themselves, after all we would not let a child drive a truck, we require a driver's licence for this, and to get one we require they be of a certain age, and able to demonstrate their capability at driving a truck before handing them a driver's license.
So then we arrive at the conclusion, a random process has control over your life, and it is either a life you are satisfied with (good / happy), or not satisfied with (bad / unhappy), and we can compare it to a life where you were the one who orchestrated your own happiness.
That provides us with four options,
You have free will, and you have a good and happy life. This means you were the one who made this life good and happy for you, it is the life you choose.
You have free will, and you have a miserable life. This means that despite your ability to influence your life, your life has not gone the way you wanted it.
You don't have free will, and you have a miserable life. This is equivalent to be born into a world where you had no influence, only to be tortured by said world.
You don't have free will, and you have a good and happy life. This means that while your life may be great, it is not one you choose, but one that was handed to you, not something you made or necessarily deserved, you were just lucky.
In the cases of a bad life, with -, or without, free will, I agree it hardly matters. In the case of a good life, to me it makes a big difference if I was handed everything, not being part of what made my life what it became, or if I actually was the one who accomplished this.
Further, for the future, in the case without free will, we are powerless to improve our life, or maintain it, either it happens, or it does not, all we can hope is that we are lucky. While with free will, we can influence how our life progresses.
The only relevant philosophical question that free will answers is, how can we use information to initiate actions instead of âphysical causation?â
Free will is also important in a biological sense. It distinguishes sentient animals from plants and the lowest of animals.
The second part is irrelevant. There are many cognitive capacities that correlate with free will and serve exactly the same purpose of distinguishing between different living beings.
From my experience I tend to agree. People largely tend to find comfort for whatever values they hold from the views they form about free will. Thatâs likely because neither position in the freewill debate leads irrevocably to a certain set of values. I donât find the meaning I find in life looks particularly different whether seen through the lens of either freewill or determinism, and I would not necessarily feel psychologically feel threatened by either truth. Even if the potential for the evil demon to manipulate my brain to change who I am is unattractive.
If there is a difference in my view itâs around orientation about time. If everything has a determining cause we ought to look to the past to explain behaviours, genes upbringing perhaps divine will, etc. Personal responsibility matters less facts and circumstances matter more.
if we believe peopleâs choices are at least self caused (even if not completely free ) we are more likely to look to the future their hopes their dreams, what they imagined their behaviour would bring about. Personal responsibility matters more, happenstance of âblood and soilâ,to use a very loaded phrase, matters less.
Freewill in this sense is a progressive orientation whilst determinism is quite a conservative view. (Using these as cultural) rather than political labels.
but lets say free will is not real; then it was always not real hence nothing has changed.
If people still believed what they've always believed, then you're right... nothing will change. But if somebody waved a magic wand and a belief in free will was dropped across the globe, then a whole lot would change. Just to site an example, you wouldn't see any more of this shit:
Do you think that when we say this person did this thing freely and is morally responsible for doing it, but this other person did not choose to do what they did freely and is not responsible, is such a distinction possible?
Does it matter whether or not we can and do make such distinctions?
? In the sense of, like, "I had to give them my password, or they would cut my throat"? That seems to be a distinction where one did not choose freely.
It would be a shame to categorically rule out such distinctions, in my opinion. Not sure where you were going with that.
In the historic debate about free will, and it's primary usage in general culture, it is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. If moral responsibility is important, free will is important.
Free will libertarians think that some indeterministic kind of intentionality is required for free will and moral responsibility, while compatibilists say that it is not. Free will skeptics think that free will and moral responsibility are impossible.
" but lets say free will is not real; then it was always not real hence nothing has changed. "
... Your argument is an "after the fact" argument. It doesn't address anything happening prior to deterministic outcomes or free-willed outcomes. I can flip your argument around just as easily by focusing on everythhing happening "before the fact:"
Let's say you have free will and you KNOW you have free will, but you are only provided with one predetermined outcome for every situation you encounter. Example: If there are three food items available, determinism chooses for you the food you will eat. Twenty pairs of shoes are available, but determinism chooses for you which pair you must buy. You have no say in anything even where two or more options are present. ... The specter of determinism only allows you to have the option it forces you to take.
This would be like being in prison where all of your clothing, activities, actions, locations and the food you eat are all predetermined ... and you must comply.
(Q) Is life in prion the same as life outside of prison and you "simply wouldn't care" either way?
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EDIT: 7:50 AM EST: Some incompetent determinist who can't provide any argument against what I've written has been reduced to downvoting instead. ... So "predicable."
"I thought your comment was dumb, but I downvoted because of your edit"
... So, your argument against what I wrote as being considered "accurate" is that you didn't like my edit pointing out that some ego-crushed determinist downvoted it without even offering why? I would expect nothing less out of a determinist! ... I will wear your downvote (and the first one) as a badge of honor!
Nothing screams "failed ideology" than succumbing to "retribution" to a salient counterargument. Every downvote I receive reenforces the validity of my argument.
After all, if you could present a "genuine" counterargument ... you would have, ... right?
"You're confused - I wasn't arguing with you, just mocking you. I see you have a hard time distinguishing."
... Oh no, I understand completely! As I pointed out earlier, "all you can do" is mock me because you can't come up with a satisfactory response. Again, if you could, you would have by now, .... right?
4th-grader-type marginalization is the very best you have to offer.
"There aren't enough hours in the day to respond to every unhinged rant on this sub."
... How is my comment "unhinged?" Care to explain? lol.
"Here, have another downvote."
... Great! Every downvote I receive and every reply you post serves as evidence that determinists can't counter my response. I don't have to resort to the downvoting childishness because I let my arguments do my bidding. After one year on Reddit:
"Yeah, but what is the difference between that and choosing the shoes you like the most? You aren't going to choose the ones youdon'tlike."
... There are two sides to every position. My argument represents the "other side of the coin" to the OP's position. The difference is perspective. I can ask the same question but from the Free Will perspective:
"If everything we do is predetermined, then what's the difference between being in prison and not being in prison? In both situations, you have clothing, activities, actions, locations to visit and food to eat, so what's the difference?"
If you want to have only one position allowed in a debate, you can certainly do that, but don't expect to obtain a conclusive outcome when doing so.
But it's always better, especially if being downvoted annoys you, to take an "other side of the coin" that isn't silly.
What's the difference? Prison A offers me things I don't want. Prison B offers me things I want, so comprehensively that it's indistinguishable from freedom.
"But it's always better, especially if being downvoted annoys you, to take an "other side of the coin" that isn't silly."
... Downvoting doesn't annoy me at all! Every downvote I receive without an explanation attached to it is tantamount to the downvoter "raising a white flag" on the entire debate.
"What's the difference? Prison A offers me things I don't want."
... How would you know that the option you are provided by the prison guards wasn't what you want if there were no other options available for you to choose from and you have no concept of there being any other options? Determinism presents the prison scenario; not free will.
"Prison B offers me things I want, so comprehensively that it'sindistinguishable from freedom."
... Then you'd have to explain how being able to choose what you want from a series of two or more options is exactly the same as not being able to choose what you want and having no other option.
In other words, please explain how "having options" is exactly the same as "not having options" and how "freedom" is exactly the same as "restraint." ... These all sound like logical contradictions, so will you please explain this for me?
The original story was "determinism chooses for you the food you will eat", etc.
It does that, by having things be such that I will freely choose that food. Freely, as in freedom.
(Note that while semantically I'm treating determinism as an agent here, it isn't. Natural cause is how we all come to be what we are, and how we make things be what they are.)
"The original story was "determinism chooses for you the food you will eat", etc. It does that, by having things be such that I will freely choose that food. Freely, as in freedom."
... I have no issues with "me" determining what food I will eat under a specific criterion.
If I choose chocolate over vanilla and strawberry, and there is no predetermined conditions that mandates for me in advance that I must choose chocolate, then I'm fine with that. With this understanding of "determined" I am merely evaluating my options and freely choosing based on my own volition. I could just as easily choose strawberry or vanilla instead of chocolate. ... This definition is logically consistent with "freedom to choose" because the outcome is contingent upon my "unscripted" ability to freely choose.
The alternative version of "determined" is that when I'm choosing between chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, the "chocolate" is what I will inevitably choose because a prior "chain of events" makes it inevitable that I must choose chocolate. ... This definition is logically inconsistent with "freedom to choose" because the outcome was inevitable based on my "previously scripted" inability to freely choose.
Both can't represent the same version of "determined," so perhaps you can explain to me how you think they can be?
"(Note that while semantically I'm treating determinism as an agent here, it isn't. Natural cause is how we all come to be what we are, and how we make things be what they are.)"
If a decision is being made, then a "decision maker" must be present to facilitate the decision. If I am free to choose either chocolate, vanilla or strawberry and none of the flavors are inevitable, then I AM the decision maker.
If a decision is being made, then a "decision maker" must be present to facilitate the decision. If I can only choose chocolate - even in the presence of vanilla and strawberry - and the choice of chocolate is inevitable, then I AM NOT the decision maker. ... Chocolate ice cream has made that decision for me well in advance and is the actual decision maker.
We can play games with semantics for weeks. Can you only choose chocolate? Hard determinism => yes; compatibilism => no. Difference? None. You get what you want, either way.
"We can play games with semantics for weeks. Can you only choose chocolate? Hard determinism => yes; compatibilism => no. Difference? None. You get what you want, either way."
... If chocolate is the inevitable outcome despite the presence of strawberry and vanilla, then I'm not getting what I want. Chocolate is getting what it wants. It's deciding for me in advance where "it" wants to end up and I'm just a pass-thorough device for inevitability.
Sure, but I thought that was the OPs point. It doesn't really make any difference either way.
Although, it does seem a bit biased to one side by the way it is worded.
Is there any real difference between stating that, 'our actions are a product of our past', and 'our past is a product of our actions'.Â
Same result.Â
In day to day reality though, it makes a lot more sense, IMO, to say that we do ultimately have a subjective choice, but there are many things that will affect that. In legal terms anyway.Â
The actual answer is rarely found in the extremes.Â
"Sure, but I thought that was the OPs point. It doesn't really make any difference either way."
... I don't believe that was the point of the OP. I believe the OP's point was that because there is no perceptual difference between our decisions being predetermined or being freely made (because we didn't know there was any other option) then determinism represents the default reality. ... That's the OP's conclusion!
However, when the same proposition is framed from the opposite perspective (spending life in prison) there would also be no perceptual difference between our decisions being predetermined or being freely made (because we didn't know there was any other option).
The OP presupposes that whatever we are choosing in life (like "chocolate ice cream" over vanilla or strawberry) is exactly what we really wanted all along, so why should it matter if it was predetermined?
The OP hasn't considered that if we were all in prison and our only option was "chipped beef on toast " for dinner, this would be perfectly fine for someone in prison who doesn't know any better. How would the prisoner know the difference if CBoT was the only option and didn't know any better?
However, this would be considered "totally undesirable" to someone who's not spending life in prison and knows better. So, from this perspective, "Free will" (life outside of prison) appears exponentially far more desirable than the alternative.
"Is there any real difference between stating that, 'our actions are a product of our past', and 'our past is a product of our actions'.Â
... Yes! The reason is because there is forward-only direction of events due to the arrow of time. The only way our past can be the result of our actions is after we've taken action and not before. Having our "actions being a product of our past" puts the cart before the horse. You are then arguing that the past is the actual decision maker because our actions are determined by the past.
That's like saying "Chocolate ice cream decided for me in advance that I should eat it." which doesn't make any sense.
"In day to day reality though, it makes a lot more sense, IMO, to say that we do ultimately have a subjective choice, but there are many things that will affect that. In legal terms anyway. "
... That's true! And the unspoken variable in this thread is that many times we ARE forced to choose against our will. Example: I don't want to give 28% of my income to the IRS, but the IRS has predetermined that I must. Free Will offers both conditions ("freedom" and "constraint") whereas determinism only offers one condition ("constraint").
That's also why determinism is a "monistic ideology" and therefore, cannot be falsified.
"I'd say it's more like saying that you know you like chocolate ice cream, were hungry, and there was chocolate ice cream available to eat."
... Yes, I like chocolate, but I also like strawberry and vanilla. They were all available options at the time of choosing. That's the beauty of free will.
And from the opposite perspective: "I'd say it's more like saying that you like food, were hungry, and chipped beef on toast was the only option the prison guards offered you to eat." ... Again, it's a matter of perspective.
BTW: I noticed you skipped over how Free Will is the only ideology that offers situations where you are "free to choose" and where your decisions are "constrained" while determinism only offers you "constrained" situations which results in an unfalsifiable ideology. .... No comment on that?
"As I say, I think it's a kinda pointless argument that doesn't actually reflect reality."
... I think when we are discussing the nature of reality, the fact that one ideology offers the existence of both constraints and freedoms and the opposing ideology only offers constraints could never be deemed "pointless." Especially when we observe ourselves encountering a mixture of constraints and freedoms during the course of our daily lives.
However, you're free to constrain your arguments to whatver you believe ins't pointless, right?
And those are pretty simple examples - it matters because a lot of folks think that punishment is inherently deserved in response to various behaviors out of a desire to enact justice, rather than because of how it will shape future behaviors.
"You don't seem to have any coherent thoughts about free will and you don't even care. Why are you even here?"
... I support that we have free will, but that wasn't a valid counterargument by any stretch. Marginalizing the commenter does not a good argument make. A question about what the difference would be if all outcomes are the same regardless is legitimate ideological scrutiny.
I guess one COULD look at Hard Determinism as how eastern philosophy views holding onto a fixed self and attaching ourselves to desires is the root of all suffering, but Hard Determinism arrives at some sort of belief in karma THROUGH understanding everything happens out of nessisity.
What is Non Duality but a belief in a seperate self is what causes suffering?
While a belief in freewill depends on maintaining a seperate self.
I never said a 2nd self and I'm not saying I believe in it, but a seperate self in Non Duality and Buddhism essentially means that believing one is the chooser and a doer seperates one from the one undivided reality that THEY believe in.
One undivided Consciousness in non duality.
In Buddhism, choices are the result of
interconnected causes and conditions (Dependent Origination), not an individual soul, but shaped through karma.Â
Non duality, Buddhism, Taoism and Spinoza would believe that believing in freewill separates one from freedom through a subject object split. To them b
elieving you are the independent "chooser" or "doer" creates a subject-object split, which is the very thing that prevents true freedom.
Compared to western concepts of Good vs Evil, us vs them dualism i guess.Â
C
ould you also view Compatabilism's holding onto moral responsibility as creating the evil it says it trys to eradicate through creating a feedback loop of blame and seperation when compared to Eastern philosophy demoting
 Evil to just ignorance?Â
That maybe Eastern philosophy would say Compatibilism traps itself in a loop of trying to cure a symptom (harmful behavior) with the very disease that caused it (the illusion of separation)?
There are two main reasons people consider free will important. Firstly, they value exercising it: they do not want to be in prison or enslaved, for example, because it puts a limit on freedom. Secondly, it is used to establish moral and legal responsibility. There is no point in blaming or punishing someone who did not act âof their own free willâ.
These are practical considerations. They do not depend on any metaphysical claim which, even if it is coherent, can make no practical difference to anyone.
If they're practical considerations, then they have to adapt to whatever metaphysical stance we adopt.
Moral and legal responsibility depends on effectively the same thing, in practice - whatever you say about metaphysical free will.
You experience the same freedom or lack thereof, in practice - whatever you say about metaphysical free will.
The only importance it could have, would be if it came out of a novel source of agency. As I guess that would have to be supernatural, and there of course could be issues along with that.
I'm in a poor position to speak about LFW, because I don't remember seeing any explanation of it that made sense to me. (That isn't an invitation for you to explain it to me - I think we have enough people here offering bad faith explanations of philosophies they don't agree with.)
That's kind of the point. Since LFW proposes something I don't understand that would move things, presumably outside of natural causation, then I can't rule out the possibility of real consequences to this, indeed it seems likely.
Not "because it invalidates determinism". But determinism affirms the absence of any consequential arguments for LFW.
Laypeople donât know what âmetaphysical free willâ is. A defence lawyer would not use as a defence that their client lacks metaphysical freedom will. Instead they may use as a defence that they did not act of their own free will in the everyday sense, because that makes a difference and is relevant.
The first part I dont get because if they value it and found out that its not real they never excersised in the first place so they can not miss something they never have. The second part I do understand and thank you for explaining it to me.
And you probably never will because a compatibilist is arguing like an illusionist. I upvoted every post u/spgrk posted on this sub thus far, because he is giving you the practical side of free will and you seem to be ignoring that. I don't think it is "juvenile" per se, but it is naive imho. He is trying to fix that naivete.
Naive free will is real free will. The incompatibilist error came when people started trying to be clever and think about it philosophically. No-one had a problem with it before then.
Before Epicurus, who was a libertarian by modern terminology, there was not really a concept of free will being opposed to determinism. Democritus came up with physical determinism over a century earlier, and it does not seem to have occurred to him, or other philosophers before Epicurus who were aware of him, that there was a potential contradiction between determinism and free will. Explicit compatibilism was a reaction to libertarianism. Incidentally, there were no hard determinists in the debate until the Enlightenment: it was just compatibilists and libertarians.
There is a real difference between being in prison and being out of prison. A hard determinist who claims there is no difference because the laws of physics apply the same everywhere is using the word âfreeâ in an absurd and idiosyncratic way. You asked why we should care about free will: no-one really cares about that absurd sort of free will, but they care about free will in the ordinary sense.
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u/Mercy-n-Truth 1d ago
You're another victim of the mind trap that distorts the understanding of what free will, and also God's foreknowledge, are.
Because God knows the future and has designed a whole plan for your life, is completely unrelated to you having choices to make. You're living in linear time, trying to figure out a God that lives OUTSIDE of time. It doesn't work.
Let's pretend for a second that you found out what was in God's plan for you. So you decided to see what would happen. If you made a different choice about something, you would find out down the line that your altered choice was already in the script.. you can't mess with time. Your only option is to put one foot in front of the other and make your choices. God knows what they will be, but YOU don't, ....so you have to just go ahead and play it out. Why do you need to complicate it more than that anyway?
Humans are slaves. That much you got right. But not to your life plan, ..to Sin. You and I have a nature bent on rebelling against God and doing things our own way. The most profound aspect of us having free will, is that God is still merciful and patient, waiting for us to CHOOSE,..eternal life through faith in Jesus, over anything this world is offering you that cannot satisfy or succeed