What is Freewill? I come from the presupposition of a reformed theological mindset, so my thoughts on the subject are pretty obvioius, but I'm curious as to what others think. I wont badger your position with antagonist comments, but I may ask follow up questions, just to get a better feel of your thought process behind your conclusion. Please, not "flame baiting", or "trolling". There are plenty of other threads on which you can seek to pleasure yourself with said tactics.
Free Will to me is the ability and freedom to explore possibilities and grow through experience. On a more spiritual level, it would entail our innate curiosity and imagination virtually forcing the questioning of "that which is".
I do not believe in free will. I think we are forced to act the way we do by our thoughts and values, which in turn are informed by our experiences and brain functions. I only act randomly when I decide to act randomly, and the randomness of my acts is constructed by my imagination, which has been formed from my experiences. I believe this because when I think about it, I have good reason for doing everything that could be argued as free will. Can you mention an instance of free will that isn't actually thought by a person and ultimately constrained by values he already has?
I’ve come to accept that free will is an illusion. Like most people I had a problem with that idea at first but the more I looked into the science of it the more it became undeniable. Just take some time to pay attention to your actions on a daily basis. We are constantly doing things throughout the day that though we are aware its happening we didn’t consciously dictate it to be so. When you take a drink of water, whether it is to go and get a glass of it, take a drink off a fountain or just drink out of the cup in front of you the seemingly conscious decision is technically a memory based on the fact that your body and subconscious made the decision that you were thirsty up to some several seconds before you were consciously aware of it. Just pay attention to your thoughts. Where do they come from? Do you choose to think what you think or do thoughts just appear in the mind? In order for us to have free will we would have to be the author of our thoughts but that we mean we would have to think them before we think them. From what I remember our subconscious processes information a million times faster than our conscious which means for every one thought in our conscious our subconscious has one million. In fact when you really think about it it would be an absolute disaster if we had free will. Imagine being presented with a fairly difficult decision. Perhaps someone you know is being cheated on but the situation is complicated, what do you do? With determinism your mind automatically opens all the files that pertain to that situation. Countless bytes of data compiled over the course of your life, that one conversation you had with your grandfather that really stuck with you but also all the ones you can’t consciously remember, talks with your parents, teachers, friends, movies you’ve watched, books you’ve read, music you listened to, not to mention all the human interactions from the subtle to the blatant. Your subconscious mind uses this information to create a couple of choices and presents them to your consciousness. You then use a very small amount of that information based on your experiences to weigh those two choices. When you are deciding what to do about your friend being cheated on do honestly consciously go through all the information you’ve gathered in your life before making a decision? How exactly would that work? We have to make too many decisions on a day to day basis and there is far too much information needed to make the larger decisions to leave it up to our sluggish consciousness. We would never get anything done because we’d be too busy being aware of our thoughts. I mean we are already distracted enough with the small about that makes it through to our consciousness now imagine being conscious of millions of thoughts every second. I’m on no sleep right now so I hope I’m being coherent but I’ll just finish with the fact that every day science is learning more about the human brain and the more we learn the more absurd the idea of free will gets. Remember, it’s not only theists who have a problem with the idea that free will is an illusion but science doesn’t concern itself with what we want to be true.
Many people will tell you that free will is an illusion. I disagree. A 'choice', I believe, is nothing more than the outcome of a complex series of interactions in our brains, influenced heavily by even more complex structures that have built upon previous interactions and stimuli. So does the fact that the outcome would be the same, if it were somehow possible to have exactly identical histories and situations, mean that the choice is not made freely? I don't think so. 'Free' merely implies that the choice is made without interference from an outside agency. You may be a slave to the happenings of your own brain, but that is not an outside agency. Therefore I don't think it is correct to call free will an illusion in a general sense.
Well, as I see it, the happenings of my own brain is not free from influence from outside agencies. The experiences my brain uses to make the decisions are from outside my brain, and thus, interference exists.
True, perhaps I need to refine my terms then. I consider 'free will' to be free because choices can be made without deliberate outside interference.
but you have the opportunity to spend time analyzing those outside influences and how they have coloured your thinking.
Yes, but my analysis (and its frequency) will also be influenced by my experiences. I wouldn't spend nearly as much time analysing my thoughts if it wasn't for the fact that I have done it before and got positive results from it. I will only take the opportunity to analyse the colouring of my thinking if my external experiences and brain structure tell me to.
That is a very thought out answer. I know you're coming to a much different conclusion, but I don't see how we're that far apart.
I don't have a problem with "free will". But what you're talking about is very interesting. I wonder if "free will" is an appropriate name for the concept. If there was a God (coming from your perspective), would He subconciously be the one driving those decisions?
I can see that too. The words of our conclusions are very different, but I think our thoughts are closer than our words let on. We're just using different words. I think I discuss the formation of our thoughts, whereas you discuss what we're allowed to do with our thoughts when we have them. However, I'm not quite sure what your beliefs are on the subject.
Free will is the ability to make your own decisions and act on them without any uncontrolled influence. Free will doesn't exist and can't. Your personality cannot be defined by yourself. It's like a being creating themself
I am a believer in free will, which to me means that people can make decisions without them being influenced by an absolute external force, meaning a force that someone MUST follow. In this way, free will is mutually exclusive with the existence of an omniscient creator god.
It's not even about consciousness of thoughts or the processing of possibilities. Even if you could process every possibility, it wouldn't change the face that any decision you make is predetermined by your experiences and biological makeup. Our personalities are defined by these things and it's nothing that is possible to have control over. Your biology is out of your control and your responses to your experiences are predetermined by that biology, so even your socialization is out of your control. So ability to process information is irrelevant as all of your decisions based on any information you have will be determined by neurological factors unable to be controlled. This is why people with certain brain injuries will behave differently. If decisions were not dependent on brain structure, brains would really be worthless.
Correct. You only have the illusion of free will. In actuality you would be a robot acting out a pre-programmed routine that was decided the instant the universe was created.
So, If I remove half of your brain, this should have no affect on your decisions? I mean, you didn't create your brain - your parents did. So, since that is an external force, then it should be irrelevant to your decision making, yes? - - - Updated - - - Why is this dependent on a god? Why does a god mean there is no free will but no god means there's free will? Either way, you didn't create yourself.
