Keith Russell

Clutch, well said.

(I still choose to avoid using the phrase, 'free will', whenever I can. It simply seems to unecessarily cloud the issue...)

Keith.

mhc

I want to think that life and free will are a priori conditions for "being biological."
I am exploring the idea that life is not so much made of matter as life makes itself from matter. This entails that living matter is somehow fundamentally different than inert matter. It's like elan vital, and posits consciousness as prior to being.
I am an atheist, yet maintain that there is a *telos* involved in all life processes. Is that necessarily a condradiction?

John Page

Of course, you have no choice in the matter.
If god is the "end", yes. If "everything is an end of itself", not necessarily.

Cheers, John

Nowhere357

I've enjoyed your posts. I have no real problem with anything you've said, except for your conclusion. Let me examine some of your statements, and try to identify why I think your conclusion is wrong.

"...every decision..." implies that we make decisions - free will.
"...but accepting (as) illusion..." Acceptance requires decisions.

No. To make decisions IS free will. The brain presents the choices, variously weighted. The lower the weight, the more will is required to make that choice.

To accept determinism requires a decision, which implies will. I understand your point, I'm trying to show that to even make your argument, we must assume we have will!

Decisions are the application of will. Again, I understand you think "decisions" are just the brain working away, as we watch. That begs the question.

I understand your point. But we can't realize anything unless we pay attention, and that involves will. Compassion, anger, tolerance, and understanding ALL require an entity capable of making decisions, and so involve the application of free will.

So would moral behavior. Many people would "realize"(!) that without free will, they are not responsible for their actions.

The best argument in the world. Direct experience. None better.

The question should be about the nature of will, and not it's existence.

If there is no free will, how could they choose anything?

The pleasure/pain concept provides support for free will. Try holding your hand in a candle flame. It requires the application of will to hold it there. Direct experience.

The evidence indicates that our choices seem to be objectively predetermined, and subjectively involving free will.

"Fate" does not require that we can predict all possible "challenges and events", only that the events are predetermined. If there is no will, then everything IS fated.

Clutch has it right when he says: "Of course there is free will. We know what it is because we have it; and we know, for at least many cases, when we or others lack it.
We act freely when we do what we want to, because we want to. The dispute over whether there exists free will is a confusion: the real debate is over the implementation of the phenomenon."


Free Will is Alive and Well!

Clutch

Keith, I find just the opposite. It is denying free will that clouds the issue, since it looks for all the world like a denial of the phenomena: deliberation, responsibility, purposefulness, action, intent...

Each of these phenomena is genuine, though. And each is physically constituted.

abe smith

No need to get one's knickers in a twist trying to "define" "life".
There isn't any entity call-able "life". Cf Ernst Mayr's cogent page-or-two on this in his recent book *What Is Biology*.
Your thinking (is there "thinking"?) will proceed more um, fruitfully/usefully if you decide to do w/o that platonic fiction, viz "life", and stick w/ discussing human & others's actions....

John Page

Abe: Are you on commission? . Really though, life is a property of an entity distinct from just being. Are you saying the attribute "living" is not relevant to having choices?

Cheers, John

Clutch

Who said anything about "entities"? Life is not a substance; Mayr is correct about this, but in no way novel.

If there is no life, then "There is no life on Earth" is true.

But "There is no life on Earth" is not true; or rather, redefining one's terms in order to explain the sense in which it is true will cause much more confusion than it remedies.

Of course there is life on Earth. Of course there is free will. The question is, what does saying these things commit us to? Answer: nothing magical or mystical or non-natural.

T. E. Lords

I didn't read through the entire thread so if this has been covered then I apologize. I would also like to state before, I begin, that I don't believe in total free will nor do I believe that our lives are completely determined.

I've read about cases of brain damage where the individual is left with out the ability to understand the moral or social consequences of their actions. The person is unable to stop themselves from acting on even the most absurd notions that enter their mind.

So my question is, would this person have more or less free will than the rest of us?

I'm not exactly sure where I stand on this. In one aspect that are free from all social restraints and simply act on what ever it is they are thinking. But on the other hand they have no control to conform to a social norm should they choose to do so. And they are slaves to every impulse that comes their way.

Mat Wilder

It seems to me that if determinism is true, there can be no such thing as "comfort." I mean, how can deciding to believe in determinism bring one comfort? According to determinism, one cannot even decide to believe in determinism - if one believes, it was out of one's control; if one doesn't believe, it was out of one's control.

Perhaps we are all really determined, but can we actually know that we are?

Also, I am not even sure the debate between determinists and free will-ers even makes sense. I am studying Wittgenstein a lot, and I think according to him this debate is nonsense. I need to do some more reading before I understand exactly why it is nonsense though. I'll post again when I do.

Oh, and another thing. I just finished reading Kant's Prolegoma to Any Future Metaphysics and am very intrigued by the idea of the noumenal realm. Kant claims that we need the noumenal realm in order to have free will. I know Hegel and the other German Idealists denied that the noumenal realm existed, or said that if it did, that it was extraneous. Is that really so? Does a noumenal realm "exist?" Or is it necessary in order to have free will?

Lastly, (about Wittgenstein) the reason, I think, that he would say the debate is senseless is because free will and determinism are used wrongly in the language game that we're playing. But, as I said, more on that later.