BurgDE

Everyone believes in "free will". Otherwise, our sense of justice and accountability is an illusion. Certainly, our experience of being able to make significant choices is a mystery. But because our experience of free will does not fit in with our understanding of the physical universe does not mean that we should deny that it exists -- like some fundamental creationist denying the reliability of evolution.

Liquidrage

I don't believe in free will so ypu're wrong.

You need to define your use of "free-will".

I use the definition meaning "the ability to make choices without constraints."

If you mean that "people make choices" then yeah, I and 99% of the world's population probably agree with you.

If you mean that the mind somehow escapes the deterministic laws of universe then you will find plenty that don't agree with you.

Mageth

Are you saying I can't not believe in free will? In that case, I guess I don't have free will.

A3

Hi Liquidrage,

What does this law of the universe tell me I cannot think about and thus cannot want. The only thing I can think of that I cannot think about is something I don't know about, but other than that....... I don't know.

Regards
Adriaan

Liquidrage

A3,

Is there something meaningfull in what you said that I am missing?

Steven Carr

Of course, we can make choices, and have free will.

There is no conflict between
1) I determine what I choose
2) The state of the universe determines what I choose

unless you believe that you are not part of the universe.

(NB Determinism has not been proved, but the only alternative to determinism is randomness)

excreationist

Justice and accountability within a deterministic society are important in order to make sure the society functions properly. If no-one was punished for their crimes against society the society would probably collapse.

We basically just recall lots of learnt problem solving strategies until we think of a solution to the problem which seems to work. If we are limited by time, we'd just make decisions based on less of our problem solving strategies so the knee-jerk decision could be a bad one - compared to if we had more time to weigh up more of our problem solving strategies. We don't know the final result of the decision until we have arrived at our final decision. Our ignorance of our final decisions make us feel there is a freedom to our choices rather than us feeling it is predetermined.

The sensation of free-will exists but that doesn't mean that our decisions aren't made by a purely mechanical (e.g. purely physical) mechanism.

BurgDE

Thank you for your replys.

Making a free choice is incompatible with determinism. Please refer to Peter van Invagen's "Metaphysics" and his "An Essay on Free Will". Determinism implies that only one alternative is physically possible (though other alternatives may appear to be open to us.) If determinism is true, then how can we hold anyone accountable. It is not they who chose but some set of initial conditions beyound their control that determined the evil course of events. Why should we punish the Nazies who threw babies into furnaces? The Nazies had no choice; it was their destiny to murder millions of innocent civilians.

Philosoft

Someone brought this up on a different thread. You're confusing determinism with pre-determinism. The Nazis' behaviors were not inevitable from the first moment of time (pre-determinsm). They were necessary outcomes of the totality of certain preceding events.

Theophage

Material posted by BurgDE will be in bold:

Making a free choice is incompatible with determinism.

Well, that depends on what you mean by a "free" choice; see Steven Carr's response above. If you define a free choice as one that is made without any influencing factors, then there is no difference between such a choice and a random choice. I don't think that is what you'd meant.

Legally, free choice is something made without outside coercion. But what about internal coercion? If I am forced to make a certain choice by my own mind, is not the choice still mine?

Consider this thought experiment: Which do you choose, A or B? The choice is essentially a random one unless you know something about A or B by which to make your decision. And if your non-random decision is based solely upon known facts about them, isn't that decision essentially deterministic? Did your free will lapse when you made that decision simply because it was based upon particular factors?

If determinism is true, then how can we hold anyone accountable. It is not they who chose but some set of initial conditions beyound their control that determined the evil course of events. Why should we punish the Nazies who threw babies into furnaces? The Nazies had no choice; it was their destiny to murder millions of innocent civilians.

This is a disturbingly common fallacy: that if one makes an action that is not based in "free will", that punitive action should not be (nor ethically could be) taken. This is simply nonsense, and only takes a few seconds of thought to understand why.

Consider a rabid dog loose in a shopping mall biting people. Do we stand around going: "Well, the dog isn't a moral agent and doesn't have free will, so we really can't do anything to stop him"? No, the dog is promptly dispatched.

Whether or not appropriate actions can be taken to stop certain behaviors or events from occuring has little or nothing to do with the quality of free will in the agents of that behavior or event.

Another way to look at it: If humans don't have free will, and the Nazis had no choice but to muder innocents, than the rest of us have no choice in our desire to see them punished for it...

Daniel "Theophage" Clark

[ June 20, 2002: Message edited by: Theophage ]</p>