John Page

Taff:

The mind's processing of information and ability to act upon that information give us choice. Hence the statement "I can choose to do what I want." That choice is not strictly deterministic, (in the sense of a rock hitting another rock cannot determine which way it bounces) but we can weigh the matter up and act in a manner intended to bring about an intended outcome. This is not to say that our minds do not operate in a deterministic manner.

So, free will is a mistaken illusion arising from our ability to choose free from external physical force.

Cheers, John

Neilium

John,

How does the "ability to choose free from external physical force" differ from free will?

My follow-up question: Does determinism exclude free will? If yes, how?

This isn't any sort of bait or troll. I wouldn't be up at midnight typing this if it was. I do genuinely want to understand these ideas.

-neil

Amos

But John, did we not just see here or in another thread that whatever exists in the imagination must exist in reality as well? I think it went something like "only the knowledge that exists in our own mind is that which we can have knowledge off" to which my response was that also the idea of omniscience exists in our own mind.

Free will is indeed a reality or we could not have the idea of free will.

Neilium

John,

How does the "ability to choose free from external physical force" differ from free will?

My follow-up question: Does determinism exclude free will? If yes, how?

This isn't any sort of bait or troll. I wouldn't be up at midnight typing this if it was. I do genuinely want to understand these ideas.

-neil

Nowhere357

As soon as you decided to accept the preconception that you "have no free will", you exercised your free will! In what way does calling this "illusion" furthur our understanding?

After all, even your physical body is illusion. Did your body exist before you were born? After you die? Does it not change constantly? The boundaries between a body and the world are illusion, so the body doesn't exist. How does that interpretation help understanding?

This idea does not contradict determinism. For example, think of a radio. Where do the voices come from? Investigate scientifically, and at what point can we say "here is where the voices come from."? In this case of course, no emergent theory will ever completely explain it - the voices ultimately come from outside of the radio, in the form of radio waves, which exist everywhere at once (so to speak). Non-emergent is not the same as non-deterministic.

IMHO telling me that pain (and free will, etc.) is "illusion", has no more meaning than to say "God made everything". Anyway, this is profound and exciting stuff, and I wish you well in your explorations!

King's Indian

Hello, TW.

Some problems with accepting that there is no free will.
Belief
Nowhere357's point, in effect: How can one decide to accept, or come to the conclusion consistently that there is no free will?
Legal
Again, if we are entities with patterns of behaviour rigorously proscribed by material laws that give the illusion of freedom of movement (rather like clouds, which is quite a lovely thought), then how can wrongdoing be defined? It's not the cloud's fault it rained on you, and there is no real way to think how we could put one on trial.
Moral
Wouldn't this idea, if one believed and acted on it, make one succumb to fatalism? After all, if one's conscious decisions are the bubbles on the washing-up water, then my decision to stay here in bed all day and rot has all the force of a law of nature. Mary Midgley has an even better one: imagine if you were in some distress for some reason. You phone up a determinist friend to beseech them for aid, and he replies,"I'm sorry, I'd love to help, but that desire isn't really real. The only reality is what I'm going to do, which is have a biscuit and watch Corrie". You're not going to recognize the force of his argument there.

All this is by way of saying that our ability to make conscious choices is something we observe in the world every day, and to reject this evidence as something that does not fit into the way we are determined to think is not a position we need to be forced into.
You are right to situate our consciousness as ultimately relying on material causes. However, if we look for free will as a thing, a little chap who is pulling the levers, then as our knowledge of the brain grows, the smaller his office will be. If however, we look at our conscious abilities to make choices as a consequence of biological development and environment, situated in our brains, we can start looking for ways to describe the whole of our experience consistently without excluding the bits we can't bite like coins.
I second the Dennett recommendation (although the title misleads a bit: it's not all explained), but also read Mary Midgley's "Wickedness" (Routledge). Its clearly written, and a good read overall.
Take care,
KI

John Page

Amos:

To paraphrase, "The Invisible Pink Unicorn is indeed a reality or we could not have the idea of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. "

Free Will and the Invisible Pink Unicorn are both objects of the imagination and remain so until material evidence is produce for their existence outside the imagination.

Cheers, John

John Page

Free will seems to be predicated on some mysterious unknown phenomenon of soul or spirit that can act in a completely self-determined manner. The ability to choose requires that we are not compelled by forces external - so we are self-determined. I am suggesting that free will requires our minds to work in a non-deterministic manner, whereas freedom of choice does not.
Yes. Determinism requires there are no uncaused actions, in which case "free will" is a concept that can have no corollary in material reality.

(I am by no means the keeper of the scrolls on such matters - if anyone has a different view I'd love to hear it).

Cheers, John

Amos

Indeed John, visible makes invisible known and the color pink we need to make the imaginary image conceivable to exist.

John Page

I see.