Advocates of Free will. Now's your chance

So often people go on and on about Free Will. So many arguements surround ideas that it is a myth and only exists because we want it to. Others go on about determinism etc etc.

Well those who advocate it's existence can have a chance to describe the nature of free will.

What is it?
How is it free and how free is it?

 

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My thoughts on the subject

 

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We have free will, but it requires more or less that we aren't aware of it, (cause then we would only have one option), free will happens when we haven't accomplished what we want, but delay it and while we delay it more and more options gathers. Until we find the right one, but then we have alot of unnecessary options that we have to solve also, and etc. etc.

Some of the options are better and some are worse, but you can't know which options are better and which options are worse before you see it in relations to other options. My experiance tells me that the first option is often the correct one (also because you can skip all of the junk waiting for a option that is just as good as the first one - but the first option may instead get you in weird situations - which may be one of the reasons why it is ruled out (even though it isn't wrong)), even if the option doesn't seem to be at first, I've seen that if I didn't pick that particular one then other things around me would change into a less good scenario. There is a will that is based on experiance and intellect and there is a will that is based on intuition. Intuition is probably the best way (cause that picks the original choice), but that takes courage because you don't see the option before you choose it. That's because the option might be good at the particular moment, though it doesn't seem good at first (or may not be good at any other moments than that particular one). Intuition is something you don't see but know anyway, if you saw it then you would pick another way that isn't good because you ruled it out using your intellect (depending on the looks of it).

Free will does exist, cause even if it is a illusion, it must be a illusion of something. Though the free will that we have is only a illusion, it's a illusion of the will that actually do exist. But everything is a illusion, cause we are describing God, we are made in God's image, the truer we become the better do God's image become - we become better painters (so to say) and this gives us the fullfillment of the gifts (like free will).

I have given this analogy before, but I do it again. God gave us alot of gifts, free will was one of them, but the gift changes depending on where you are, if you are untrue then the gift becomes untrue. We could describe it with God as the sun, and the ray of light fading as it goes further away from the sun, is existance. Everything is more or less real depending on how far it is away from the sun (source, God), thus free will can be so much more than what we perceive it to be, if we come closer to God, every feeling becomes more true when it is close to God, the feeling becomes glorified (but be aware, the closer you get to God the more obvious do your faults become, cause it works in comparance). This is also the indication if we are on the right track or not, we feel more real and more true if we are on the path to God. Everything is more or less real, like a fading light.

 

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One raven, thanks for your link. The quick read I gave it ( I will read it again ) suggests determinism and I happen to agree however be it as it may I really wanted to find out what advocates of free will describe the nature of free will in the context that they usually defend it with.

What is Free will?
How free is it?

Cyperium, Thanks for your response. You state that God has givien us free will, what do you mean by the words Free Will? What is the nature of free will?
So often we just use these two words but fail to adequately describe what they mean.
Is anything actually "Free"?
Does freedom exist? ( in absolute)

 

Partly, yes.
But strict determinism would rule out free will, or do I not understand it correctly?

In that discussion, I am standing against strict determinsm and in favor of a combination of the two.

Everything that has ever happened will tip the scales, but ultimately you have the choice to act in any way you wish within the confines of your surroundings.

 

I like this. So we have free will in a deterministic sense.

If one imagines a circle and allows this to represent infiniite choice and you are in the circle given the task of making a choice, what determines one choice over another?

Why does one choice become more attractive?

I have often held to the notion that it is in fact our ability to NOT choose and reject all choices (other than "NOT" to choose) that gives us free will.

 

I am not a fan of Rush, but this seems to be a fitting quote.

"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."

The reason(s) that one choice would be desirable over another can not be boiled down quite so simply.

What pair of socks are you wearing?
What made you choose that pair?
It could seem as simple as, "They were the closest clean pair when I woke up."
But then you have to look at why they were the colsest clean pair...
What made you decide to wear all the other ones that are not dirty?
Why did you not do laundry last night?
Why did you buy those socks in the first place?
Did you go to that store with the specific purpose, or did you remember when you saw them on display?
Why did Bill (the merchandizing manager) decide to place them there on display?
What if Bill was out sick that day?
Why does Bill work at Walmart, anyway?
Something as simple as what socks you are wearing could be traced back to a million (conservative) points of decision made by yourself and people you have never met, some of them are not even alive anymore.
It was your laziness that made you choose the closest clean pair.
There are a million reasons why you are lazy.
However, you DO have the choice to act against your typical nature, and decide, "I want to wear red socks today, just because I want to." and dig in your sock drawer to find you red socks to wear.
Again, whatever made you decide that you want to wear red socks could have a million points of decision behind it, but you were not compelled to wear them.
Any choice you make can be traced back through the matrix of all of our interconnected decisions, however, at that point of deciding what to wear, you have a nearly limitless number of ways to go, and that choice, in turn, will effect everything else down the line.

Everything anyone ever does is influenced (not determined, influenced) by prior choices made.
Likewise, every choice you make will influence choices down the line.

That is what I believe, anyway, and I have seen nothing yet that would make me reconsider that belief.

 

In the book I am currently working on I relate the Determinism/Free Will question to a game of pool (8-ball).

The options you have are strictly limited by:
1.) the position of the cue ball
2.) the position of all the other balls on the table
3.) where your strengths and weaknesses lie in your pool skills
4.) whether you are playing high or low balls

One and two are dependent upon:
a.) every shot made in the game up to that point
b.) the idiocyncracies of the table (such as: felt thickness, type and wear; dynamics of the rails; balance of the table; etc)
c.) the skills of all the payers on the table
d.) coincidences not directly related to the game (such as: what kind of day the players had; how many drinks they had; etc)

Three is dependent upon far too many things to list.

Four is dependent upon the first ball sunk on the table, which not only relies upon the skills of (at least one of) the players, and luck (for lack of a better word). The results of the break are part skill and part luck, and the coin toss (if there was one) for the break was luck.

Now, it is your turn to shoot, and all of these factors have determined the situation you currently find yourself in.
Your options are limited, but you DO have options.

At this point, those who deny free will will say that what shot you take is determined by your perception of the table, how you have been playing that day, your perception of your skills, the type of person you are (like going for glory shots, or taking a safety), even what your favorite color is.

My view is that you have this table in front of you, you look at it and see all your options (you may miss a few), and based on that (influenced, to different degrees, by all the things in the above paragraph) you make a decision regarding what course of action you will take.

After that, your pool skills, mood, blood achohol level, luck, etc will all determine the outcome of that particular shot, then you go back up to the top again.

Does that make any sense?

 

"and along comes a tall blonde with slender legs and a nice butt and the game of pool is forgotten and the desire to follow the tail is overwhelming."

Of course what you say makes perfect sense and also I like the use of the word "influence" as differentiated to the word "determined"

But of course Free will advocates tend to get upset when they think that they are just "pawns" in some intergallactic interplay. They find it difficult to swallow that every action is influenced by every action "past and Present"

I repeat however that it is the ability to reject a choice that gives the rejector freedom to choose.

A drug addict is incapable in the main of rejecting his choice to continue with his addiction. It is only when he can reject the choice to use that he is empowered thus achieving a greater free will.

 

Influencianism instead of determinism....hmmmmmm...yes I like that makes more sense and allows for greater freedom in the understanding. Thanks for that One Raven

 

Some people can not distinguish the difference of having your apparent choices both influenced and limited by the natural course of interaction, and the notion of being a puppet on the strings of some cognizant diety.

It is pretty simple to see that everything you do is influenced by past actions and will influence future actions.
You don't need a puppet master for that.

 

I think it may be valid to work this word "influence" a little.

In the physical world as in innanimate matter. An object propelled to a certain point can be pre-determined asssuming nothing else "influences" it's path.

You roll a ball to a pocket on the billiard table and yes it's course is predetermined almost absolutely ( except say an earh quake orexplosion etc etc)

You push a person, on the other hand, towards a pocket or destination and that persons behaviour can only be said to be influenced and not predetermined, because at all times he has an abiltity to reject the destination ( the Pocket) where as the ball has not this ability except to follow it's physics so to speak.

A scenario could be used such as a man in a prison cell and for political reason goes on a hunger strike. The guards place lots of food in his cell so as to tempt him. They even force some food into his mouth. But in the end the man dies of starvation even though one would suggest that the food supplied should have determined his behaviour.

This of course distinguishes man from lesser sentient animals in that we have the ability to reject life for an ulterior purpose, where as our humble lesser animals usually can't take that path or choice.

WE know that a pig will eventually eat food provided ( this being predeterminable) when hungry enough but one can not say the same for man.

Influence implies to me that choice is always available where as determinism implies a lacking of choice.

I think possibly that self-determinism is still valid as a concept and I see no conflict with influencanism...( Ha I like that word)
What do you think?

 

Actually, total free will would be to do a choice without picking one, cause as soon as there are possibilities the free will is less free. The exception to this might be if there were neverending possibilities, or creating possibilities (which would then be done by neverending possibilities - maybe using the principle that nothing doesn't exist, thus if you do nothing then you get something...so what do you get and why do you get that particular something? I guess because it has most meaning in the moment, but that would mean that something knowing about meaning would pick that choice for you - my guess, God). But in a way, you give the meaning (since you allways mean to say something right before you say it - but is more a indication that God really picks the right meaning for you, cause if you feel you mean something before you say it then you have allready missed your first choice - maybe, maybe not, you see, this is only what I think at the moment, if something else turns up then I want to be able to change my view on this), which might make God pick the choice that is best in the meaning that you are in (which is my second interpretation). In turn this might lead to what I said before, that we should pick the first will that comes to us, cause I guess that will is closer to it's source. Though if you wait you will miss that choice and have to wait until a certain cycle is completed to get a similar choice - at least from what I can understand, though not completly sure about.

So how can we dare to take the first choice, the choice that isn't influenced by our limited understanding of it? Cause as soon as we put understanding to it, then it becomes less than it could be. I have a feeling that the first choice comes in just the right moment, so at that particular moment, the choice has most meaning, if you miss it then gradually it will loose meaning, until the cycle is completed and the choice will come up again, now with a little less meaning than before - unless you choose a option before the cycle is completed that is. I guess we can back-track on that cycle though, but how that is possible I don't know - or at least can't explain, I guess using a harmony of some kind. Feeling in touch with the moment is when we can say exactly the right things, right?

 

Cyperium, I think you are referring to acting on impulse, be it the first impulse.
That to not act and think about it colours the impulse subjectively, thus loosing it's initial value.
In the psi world some call this Auto speach or auto function where by the person drops violition and allows themselves to speak or act purely on impulse.

 

I didn't know they had a name for it, I'm very suspiscious of naming things, since I think that takes away the flexibility of the word, or takes away the flexibility of what the word represents (cause the word becomes so intimitly associated with the representation that the representation becomes the word instead of the word the representation) (hope you see what I mean here).

Free will should be used following the truth, do what you really want. But that was easier when we were young, cause then we didn't have all of the adult expectations on us. We were allowed to move freely - well, more or less depending on the situation (because we didn't have to follow that many social-situation-rules), it's actually kind of a world within the world. Though there's problems in any stage, and maybe we didn't feel free because of the adult supervision all the time, but freedom moved from one place to another as we grew up I guess, and many things were replaced by responsibility.

One thing that most people have experiance in one way or another, is that we learned how to fool other's to think that we did something that we really didn't, or didn't do something that we really did.

This made us come up with all sorts of explanations to justify our "lie" - as in the example below it may not necessarily be a "Lie" with a big "L" but merely a small manipulation - so we allready from a early age started to walk the path of dishonesty (...or lies) (which undermines free will). Though the lies (or dishonesty) may not have been that serious and kinda accepted by people in society and around you, the small step from truth lead to another step (by justifying) and another step (when somebody asked you, and you had to give more details to your lie (or...) - which required that you got personally involved in the lie (...)), and another step (when you actually started to believe the lie (?...riddle...?)) yourself - since you identified with it) and so on... I've made this post so that it sounds like it happens to everybody, but it may be exceptions - I don't know - but if there are then that person would be very, very honest, or without faults. Cause faults are often covered-up by lies. Remember though that the lies doesn't have to be grandiour and big.

It can be as simply as this scenario:

Tom hears a joke from his friend Jim.
Tom tell the joke loud in the classroom and everybody starts laughing.
Teacher say that it was a really good joke.
Tom makes teacher believe that he made the joke himself, and don't mention his friends name.

This at first may not seem like he ever lied, sure he kept the truth about Jim away from the teacher, but merely because the teacher sort of assumed that Tom made it himself, or Tom makes her assume that he made it himself. Tom thinks that "well, I'd rather keep her assuming that I'm good at making jokes".

Cause Tom knows he is doing something wrong - but maybe socially acceptable to certain limits.

Maybe Tom really is good at making jokes, then he can justify his "lie" honestly, by telling jokes that he made himself to her, but that dishonest ground will still be there. The only way to get rid of it, is to justify his friend Jim, cause he was the one to receive the real credit - though Tom might even have told the joke better.

Justifying his friend Jim might be hard though, since maybe that joke would - if Tom was honest - strengthen the bounds that Jim had with the teacher. Maybe Jim even foresaw that Tom would say it loud in the classroom. And so on and so forth. See how this little lie had so many consequences that were partially hidden from the beginning? These kind of lies - that are this small - are mostly taken care of by mere coincidence (or so it seems), but the example is made to show how things may develop. If Tom starts later to actually say when the joke is made by him or his friend then the bad ground becomes justified (we can't be disallowed to change for the better), it can be as easy as "I heard a good joke from Jim the other day...Blah blah...", or "Jim told me this joke...blahabla...", or when the joke is finished "Jim told me that, and I laughed my...blah blahabla...off", etc.

Free will is only true to the degree that you are. You determine what you follow, am I really following my own will now, or am I following societies will, rules and regulations? The Law? Moral codes? There will allways be a law to follow, otherwize free will would be pointless, but within the room of the law are freedom, free will is thus "do what you want with the parts that you can do what you want with". We should be careful of manipulating things that are controlled by law, since the law is there for a reason - and now I don't mean police law, though I don't recommend breaking them either. We should follow that universal law so that it becomes automatic and you can be really free without breaking any laws, and even so there are unlimited possibilities. But then we have to figure out what to do with our free will...

There are truthful ways of becoming better than you are right now, cause we really are worse than we could be. So to become better, follow the truth, we can be everything we want to be - if we follow the truth (cause in a way, what you really want to be is what you allready has been - or that you could identify with). However, there might be ways to become better than you ever were, the possibilities are neverending, but being true to oneself is a big first step, I would think.

 

Is it free will, or is it a trick? If you do not like taking personal responsibility for your actions, then there is no free will. If you do take personal responsibility for your actions, but still beliieve there is no free will, you expect pity. If you take personal responsibilty for your actions, and believe in free will, you expect respect.

 

I'm no advocate of anything and I don't want to take sides in a debate about whether free will exists or not; I'd just like to highlight some concepts pertinent to the problem (QQ, that is the question expressed in your post if I'm not mistaken).

Free will exists if free actions exist. An action was free if you could have done otherwise than you actually did. You could have done otherwise if there wasn't a set of conditions from which what you did followed by deterministic (ie. causal) laws, but that doesn't imply that what you actually did was completely haphazard. The latter condition means that although there were no causes determining it, there were reasons explaining it.

Free will is not to be found in the spectrum ranging from absolute deterministic events to absolute randomness (provided the latter is a logically coherent notion at all). The hallmark of a free decision is that although you could have done otherwise, even refrained from doing it, you actually did it, and can give your reasons why you did it and not something else instead.

 

Poteous, you make a valid point and I agree.
Btw Machaon, even in a deterministic sense where free will is only a sense and not a reality still doesn't remove responsibility for your actions because responsibility is a part of that "myth" as well.

 

Quantum Quack]

[/b]What is Free will?
How free is it?[/b]

I would say "free will" is the ability to to determine ones outcome, and it is as free as ones level of intelligence and understanding.

Jan Ardena.

 

Hello everyone.

I think we have a tendency to relate our thinking too much to the things we see in the physical world. I belive that with the hugeness and complexity of the universe it would be unrealistic to belive that we can experience all there is through our naturegiven senses.

Therefore I will suggest the following:

There is more than the one reality that we live in and relate to... the nature. But we are in a very high degree unable to experience these other realities.

But we have certain indications to what these other sides of us "want us to do", and these indications is feeling of inspiration, love, happiness..... in other words; things that gives life quality and meaningfullness.

The different realities is interconnected and influences eachother, but they also have individual attributes.

In the world we see, there is free will... we can do whatever we want. In example:
we can choose to observe the lion despite of our fear of it. Other animals may not.

But in the other realitie(s) things are "given" to us by some kind of "force". These things that are given to us we can choose to follow (or not) in the world that we see.

The difficult part is to know how to do the right decisions.... I belive the right decisions are the ones that gives inspiration, happiness, love.. etc.

So, what i'm saying is that we can choose what we want in the world we see, which gives us free will. But the right thing to do is to choose the things that are "given" to us, which will rob us for our free will (but give us happiness).

So I belive we can have both.