Whats your arguement for Free Will?

Blockhead

Determinism is roughly defined as the view that all current and future events are causally necessitated by past events combined with the laws of nature.

I believe in determinism. For those of you who believe in free will, how do you explain it or defend it? Is there a part of your brain that has the ability to freely pick between two different choices?

pandora

"I don't want to think, I want to feel"
there's an Ed quote for everything got to love him!

Hugh Freaking Dillon

I decided to read up on this after seeing this thread. It's astonishing to me to see how many theories there are about free will and determinism.

I personally can't fathom the thought that I came to this message board and looked at this particular thread and I'm typing these words not by my own choice. It's mind boggling. And if this were the case, I'd never be responsible for anything I ever did in my entire life, nor is anyone else.

I feel free. I have no substantiated argument at this time but that.

Blockhead

Billy Pumpkin wrote:

I decided to read up on this after seeing this thread. It's astonishing to me to see how many theories there are about free will and determinism.

I personally can't fathom the thought that I came to this message board and looked at this particular thread and I'm typing these words not by my own choice. It's mind boggling. And if this were the case, I'd never be responsible for anything I ever did in my entire life, nor is anyone else.

I feel free. I have no substantiated argument at this time but that.

Its not that your not responsible for anything, Its just that your brain has already determined how, and what you were going to do, given your genetics, external and internal enviroments.

mikepegg44

HeidiJam wrote:

Billy Pumpkin wrote:

I decided to read up on this after seeing this thread. It's astonishing to me to see how many theories there are about free will and determinism.

I personally can't fathom the thought that I came to this message board and looked at this particular thread and I'm typing these words not by my own choice. It's mind boggling. And if this were the case, I'd never be responsible for anything I ever did in my entire life, nor is anyone else.

I feel free. I have no substantiated argument at this time but that.

Its not that your not responsible for anything, Its just that your brain has already determined how, and what you were going to do, given your genetics, external and internal enviroments.

Everyone always have the choice to do something different. It is simple to try and predict the reaction of a person after a new set of stimuli if the person trying to predict looks at how the person has reacted in the past to similar circumstances. But no one can predict with 100% certainty. We are always free to choose what path we go down. Some just never venture off their comfortable path and thus it can be said that their life was predetermined.

Blockhead

mikepegg44 wrote:

Everyone always have the choice to do something different. It is simple to try and predict the reaction of a person after a new set of stimuli if the person trying to predict looks at how the person has reacted in the past to similar circumstances. But no one can predict with 100% certainty. We are always free to choose what path we go down. Some just never venture off their comfortable path and thus it can be said that their life was predetermined.

Thats not what it means at all...

know1

I guess if Free Will weren't true, nobody would believe in it.

stargirl69

I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill :thumbup:

Hugh Freaking Dillon

oh, ok, I didn't get that from the little I read. I thought it was the whole "fate" thing. Obviously, I'm going to have to read a lot more to fully understand it.

HeidiJam wrote:

Billy Pumpkin wrote:

I decided to read up on this after seeing this thread. It's astonishing to me to see how many theories there are about free will and determinism.

I personally can't fathom the thought that I came to this message board and looked at this particular thread and I'm typing these words not by my own choice. It's mind boggling. And if this were the case, I'd never be responsible for anything I ever did in my entire life, nor is anyone else.

I feel free. I have no substantiated argument at this time but that.

Its not that your not responsible for anything, Its just that your brain has already determined how, and what you were going to do, given your genetics, external and internal enviroments.

haffajappa

I'm not sure how you can prove one or the other....
That's the beauty of philosophy i guess

he still stands

Belief in determinism seems to be a Loser's Script. If it disgusts you (the whole concept of not being able to do anything that isn't already pre-determined) like it disgusts me, if it makes you tremble with anger - that is your instinct, your personal God, telling you to rise up out of the ashes, to be born again, just as Prometheus stole fire from the Gods.... Be your own Markoff Chaney, introduce chaos into the system, and Hail Eris!

Blockhead

he still stands wrote:

Belief in determinism seems to be a Loser's Script. If it disgusts you (the whole concept of not being able to do anything that isn't already pre-determined) like it disgusts me, if it makes you tremble with anger - that is your instinct, your personal God, telling you to rise up out of the ashes, to be born again, just as Prometheus stole fire from the Gods.... Be your own Markoff Chaney, introduce chaos into the system, and Hail Eris!

What are you talking about?

Blockhead

Everything we do/say/think is determined by an unbroken chain of antecedent occurrences making us a product of our genetics & environment (nature & nurture). We are not autonomous agents capable of making free choices. As we grow and live, we make choices based on our prior experiences and thus a new event is added to the chain.

Accepting determinism doesn't take away anything from who we are, but helps us to understand 'why' we are. Many social problems can be solved, or at least understood through a determinist perspective (through modification of behavior rather than punishment). For a simple example (there are millions upon millions) - sleep deprivation in an individual can explain irregular changes in behavior and choice.

I have yet to hear an argument which successfully refutes determinism.

Look up Dennet on determinsm on youtube.

BinFrog

In my opinion, free will has to exist otherwise existence is pointless.

he still stands

HeidiJam wrote:

he still stands wrote:

Belief in determinism seems to be a Loser's Script. If it disgusts you (the whole concept of not being able to do anything that isn't already pre-determined) like it disgusts me, if it makes you tremble with anger - that is your instinct, your personal God, telling you to rise up out of the ashes, to be born again, just as Prometheus stole fire from the Gods.... Be your own Markoff Chaney, introduce chaos into the system, and Hail Eris!

What are you talking about?

By advocating chaos I would like to think that I am disputing the whole notion of determinism. There are hundreds of stories and and mythology examples of people fighting the entire notion; Prometheus and Eris are good mythological examples... Markoff Chaney is a good modern-fiction example. The simple action of one person who creates chaos would then change the deterministic reality of future events.

Furthermore, quantum mechanics has disproved the whole concept of determinism, there is an infinite number of possibilities and if you believe in determinism you'd also have to believe in an infinite number of universes (alternate realities)...

But in the end, all of this is a verbal jack-off. You choose to believe in one or the other... if you choose free will that is a winner's script. If you choose determinism you're living a loser's script.

Blockhead

he still stands wrote:

By advocating chaos I would like to think that I am disputing the whole notion of determinism. There are hundreds of stories and and mythology examples of people fighting the entire notion; Prometheus and Eris are good mythological examples... Markoff Chaney is a good modern-fiction example. The simple action of one person who creates chaos would then change the deterministic reality of future events.

Furthermore, quantum mechanics has disproved the whole concept of determinism, there is an infinite number of possibilities and if you believe in determinism you'd also have to believe in an infinite number of universes (alternate realities)...

But in the end, all of this is a verbal jack-off. You choose to believe in one or the other... if you choose free will that is a winner's script. If you choose determinism you're living a loser's script.

I'm always a little confused when people try to drag QM into this discussion as it has nothing to do with it.

Alright, so generaly the Uncertainty Principle is brought up in conversations like this. Despite it having not been directly named yet, that is what you are vaguely talking about. Now the issue with uncertainity is that it doesn't at all state that things on the quantum level are random, not even close. What it states is our issues with measuring such systems, nothing more. It only applies to the measurements to a system and says nothing about how the system works. So the entire thing is a failure from the very start.

However just for a minute lets pretend it really did apply the way some of you are thinking and things really did work randomly. Okay, so what? Its deterministic, its random, so? Either way you still can't control the effect so it doesn't matter. You aren't in control, its either going to happen in a specific manner (deterministic) or its just going to be some randomly drawn value. Either way its going to be doing whatever the hell it feels like doing, not what you want it to do. So it doesn't matter.

Now moving on from uncertainty there are issues with flucuations. I'll spare the details here, but there is a difference between a flucuation and uncertainty. But the issue here is that your brain is set up to avoid them anyways. The receptors, the membranes that produce the voltage gradient, the vesicles, they are all too big to be subject to them. These aren't little tiny molecules, these are big *ss proteins. They are big enough that flucuations play a minimal part in their activity. Its worth pointing out that some of them are big on purpose. As in functionaly they could be much smaller but they actually have sections added on that do nothing but make them bigger. The simple reason being that a computer thats subject to flucuations isn't all that great. You're data will be garbled part of the time, and that's just not very useful. So evolution has actually helped design parts of your brain to be large simply to get around this. It would seem that there is one way around this though, that being that many neurotransmitters are small molecules. However again your body gets around this by simply dumping millions of molecules at once, so its pretty much guaranteed that ones going to bind to the receptors.

So, QM isn't random. Even if it was random it wouldn't matter anyways. Your brain is actually set up to be as deterministic as possible so it won't screw up as often. And physics is pretty much going go cock block you at every chance on the free will issue. The only possibility you have of free will existing is for your brain to somehow have a nonphysical part. In other words, you'll have to fall back on the concept of a soul. You'll have to completely step out of the science aspect of this conversation if you want free will to be true; and move into the spirit/soul/whatever camp.

he still stands

HeidiJam wrote:

he still stands wrote:

By advocating chaos I would like to think that I am disputing the whole notion of determinism. There are hundreds of stories and and mythology examples of people fighting the entire notion; Prometheus and Eris are good mythological examples... Markoff Chaney is a good modern-fiction example. The simple action of one person who creates chaos would then change the deterministic reality of future events.

Furthermore, quantum mechanics has disproved the whole concept of determinism, there is an infinite number of possibilities and if you believe in determinism you'd also have to believe in an infinite number of universes (alternate realities)...

But in the end, all of this is a verbal jack-off. You choose to believe in one or the other... if you choose free will that is a winner's script. If you choose determinism you're living a loser's script.

I'm always a little confused when people try to drag QM into this discussion as it has nothing to do with it.

Alright, so generaly the Uncertainty Principle is brought up in conversations like this. Despite it having not been directly named yet, that is what you are vaguely talking about. Now the issue with uncertainity is that it doesn't at all state that things on the quantum level are random, not even close. What it states is our issues with measuring such systems, nothing more. It only applies to the measurements to a system and says nothing about how the system works. So the entire thing is a failure from the very start.

However just for a minute lets pretend it really did apply the way some of you are thinking and things really did work randomly. Okay, so what? Its deterministic, its random, so? Either way you still can't control the effect so it doesn't matter. You aren't in control, its either going to happen in a specific manner (deterministic) or its just going to be some randomly drawn value. Either way its going to be doing whatever the hell it feels like doing, not what you want it to do. So it doesn't matter.

Now moving on from uncertainty there are issues with flucuations. I'll spare the details here, but there is a difference between a flucuation and uncertainty. But the issue here is that your brain is set up to avoid them anyways. The receptors, the membranes that produce the voltage gradient, the vesicles, they are all too big to be subject to them. These aren't little tiny molecules, these are big *ss proteins. They are big enough that flucuations play a minimal part in their activity. Its worth pointing out that some of them are big on purpose. As in functionaly they could be much smaller but they actually have sections added on that do nothing but make them bigger. The simple reason being that a computer thats subject to flucuations isn't all that great. You're data will be garbled part of the time, and that's just not very useful. So evolution has actually helped design parts of your brain to be large simply to get around this. It would seem that there is one way around this though, that being that many neurotransmitters are small molecules. However again your body gets around this by simply dumping millions of molecules at once, so its pretty much guaranteed that ones going to bind to the receptors.

So, QM isn't random. Even if it was random it wouldn't matter anyways. Your brain is actually set up to be as deterministic as possible so it won't screw up as often. And physics is pretty much going go cock block you at every chance on the free will issue. The only possibility you have of free will existing is for your brain to somehow have a nonphysical part. In other words, you'll have to fall back on the concept of a soul. You'll have to completely step out of the science aspect of this conversation if you want free will to be true; and move into the spirit/soul/whatever camp.

I only read your first sentence and stopped. If you'd read up on quantum mechanics you'd never that almost every interpretation either disproves determinism or claims an "agnostic" approach. Using science and logic is the best way to approach this question... and in my mind the only way. Taking a philosophical look at the question is pointless, because I think the only philosophical question worth answering is: should we kill ourselves or not?

Cosmo

HeidiJam wrote:

Determinism is roughly defined as the view that all current and future events are causally necessitated by past events combined with the laws of nature.

I believe in determinism. For those of you who believe in free will, how do you explain it or defend it? Is there a part of your brain that has the ability to freely pick between two different choices?

...
Wait... didn't you just excercise Free Will with your admission in your belief of Determinism?

Hugh Freaking Dillon

I don't have a sweet clue what the hell is going on. And I admit that of my own free will.

he still stands

I could go out for beers and wingy's tonight or I could do laundry and clean my house.

You choose... first response wins.

I will expound after the response.

Hugh Freaking Dillon

he still stands wrote:

I could go out for beers and wingy's tonight or I could do laundry and clean my house.

You choose... first response wins.

I will expound after the response.

wings and beers. then you'll have no choice but to do laundry.