Thread: Do we really have a free will?

ive read quickly through this post very interesting i may be not as knowledgeably as some of you on these matters but just wanted to say my view I think we do have free will to a certain extent but other things have an effect on our choices ie i might just stay off work today , but then i will lose pay and maybe my job . Things effect what we may want to do so we cant external and internal factors effect our choices

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Thank you for putting together so many words! It's good to read something from you here that doesn't sound like a tweet! (I just mean here on this thread up till now - not all the time)

Though I wouldn't say that animals are at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum - I'd say 'higher' animals all have some level of conscious decision-making ability, though much more limited than ours. The simplest animals of course have the least, moving on up till you reach humans, where there's a pretty huge leap thanks to the much more highly developed cerebrum.

I'm not sure I accept the validity of that argument - that given the exact same circumstances you'd do the exact same thing every time. I mean of course, I accept that it's probably true - but I'm not sure that's really a good measure of what free will actually is. It makes certain assumptions that don't apply to all decision making - for instance if I understand it correctly you're only setting the clock back a few seconds. What about decisions that take a lot longer than that, like the one I mentioned earlier - what school to go to or whether to just go to work in a factory or join the army instead. That's not a decision you make in a few seconds, and it involves a lot of very complex variables. To me this is a much more 'human level' type of decision - as opposed to the much simpler decisions most people seem to be bringing up here. What kind of food to eat is really something even an animal can decide differently from time to time, assuming they have a choice in the matter (if you'd put out several different things for them). The cerebral cortex allows us to think abstractly on multiple levels, and to make complex decisions involving many variables - how come all the examples I've seen people mention so far completely ignore this? Its a new type of decision-making that no animal is capable of. And I agree - maybe we don't have MUCH free will - we might only really exercise it a few dozen times in a lifetime. But then all I'm saying is it's more than any other living thing we're aware of has. Little is not the same as none. That's another argument a few people seem to be saying - essentially "We have very little ability to choose really - therefore no free will" - which doesn't make any sense if you think about it!

How about this - a different take on that same example (about going back a few seconds and making the same decision each time). What if you lived the same day over and over - sort of like Groundhog Day, only unlike Bill Murray you don't know it's happening. When you've lived the same day a hundred times, do you think at the end of the day you'll have done exactly the same things a hundred times? I think some days you'll end up having accomplished and experience very different scenarios - you might have the same breakfast each day but by the time bedtime rolls around I'd say you've got the capacity for some very different things to have occurred - because you've made different choices. But then I'm not sure this is really about free will - it's more about randomness or chaos theory. The drop of water never rolls off exactly the same way twice. That's why I say it seems like a lot of people are discussing randomness rather than free will.

Free will doesn't really mean "Will you make different decisions given the exact same circumstances?" - it's more "Do you have the ability to decide what you'll do?"

So I don't think that's really a good thought experiment. I'm not sure offhand what would be, but I'm starting to think even some of the deep thinkers of the past have gotten side-tracked into fallacious thinking about free will.

This line in particular:
"Free will doesn't really mean "Will you make different decisions given the exact same circumstances?" - it's more "Do you have the ability to decide what you'll do?"

But if you wouldn't make different decisions in the same circumstances, what ability to decide exists?

I'm going to stick to my guns for a bit that you in fact wouldn't make different decisions in the same circumstances. You made a good alteration to the scenario that points out some important things with the Groundhog Day bit. First, though, I have no such assumption that the clock would only be set back a few moments. Set the clock back as far as you think it needs to go to capture all the relevant developments that influenced the choice. Set it back to the beginning of that person's life if you want. The only problem with setting the clock back further is what you mentioned, that chaos theory is more likely to skew the results the more time it has to play with. However I think we have good grounds to correct for chaos theory, because it's effect of giving random results obviously doesn't imply free will. So imagine chaos theory doesn't exist. (somehow.)

I get that I'm kinda assuming what I want to prove by saying imagine everything is exactly the same, and that means everything would happen exactly the same. But what I'm trying to bring out is that you consider if it would or not. And of course its impossible to check, so I'm standing on a pretty high stack of junk in earthquake country right now.

Well, I've already accepted that free will by definition is an impossibility (if you go by the strong definition). So I have no interest in arguing my former position. As I said already, of course we can't make any decisions completely free of influences. My mistake was in assuming we were discussing something rationally possible, therefore I assumed we were going by the weaker definition of free will, which is simply "The human ability to make choices". Once you throw in the whole "totally free of everything that makes us who we are" thing it gets ridiculous.

Besides, there's a very simple way to solve this. Just walk into any law office and ask if you can get a free will.

I thought "free will" refered to the ability to make negative or positive decisions for example: the difference between being good versus being a murderer. If that's the case then "yes" we have free will.

What about in lucid dreams? Do we have free will in lucid dreams? I feel like I have close to 100% free will in them. Way more than in my waking life.

Dark, you miss the point of the argument. At least for what I was trying to get at. If you can't make decisions free of any influence, what free will can you possibly have *with* influences? How can you say it is free will if you're only going with one choice or another based on emotions?

Also one thing I just thought of reading Indie's post is thought loops.
Aly wrote about this a while ago on here, when taking some drug can't remember what, she got stuck in a loop, and every single time she came to the came conclusion/thought the same thing etc.
This has happened to other people as well obviously.
This is a pretty controlled circumstance (assuming no other people are there) where you have all the same input but your mind basically keeps resetting back because you have lost your short term memory, and people always without fail just keep doing or saying or thinking the same thing over and over again.

For uncontrolled circumstances there is the obvious one of people with amnesia who wake up in hospital and constantly ask the same questions and react the same way every time they "reset".

What does it matter to say, you would make the same choices again? The issue is not would 'I' always make the same choice in the same setting. The issue is more given many people all in the same setting, would some make other choices? We do not all respond like natural machines acting on instinct and emotion. How about the guy who walks in on his wife with another man, and makes the choice not to react with violence, dispite the natural urge to? What use is it to say he would always make that choice? He is making that choice, but he did not have to, and another may have acted different. Free will is being used when the man makes the choice, which is why you can never predict what 'the next guy' will do.

That's.... not really an argument.

All you're saying is different people do different things. In other news water is wet and the snow is cold!

Tommo, It sounds like what you're saying is basically that all we are is our influences - heredity, experience, biases etc - and that when you do something it's really just your influences doing it. Like there really is no you.

See, I can't agree with that. The influences came together to form us, sure, and are still there - as influences - but they converge together to create a new unique identity that is you - and then you are capable of doing things and making decisions. A couple of metaphors:

If you put certain ingredients together and cook them you don't later say "here - have a bowl of little cubes of beef, coated with flour and browned with carrots, onions, red wine...". The ingredients went into it but merged at some point during cooking to become beef stew, which has a very different identity from the collection of ingredients.

Same thing happens if you put together enough trees - it becomes a forest at some point. Totally different from just 2 or 3 trees in a field. It has its own ecosystem.

Enough buildings and streets together becomes a city - not the same a as couple of houses.

To me it sounds ridiculously fatalistic or something to say all a person is is just what went into making him. It comes together into a new organism with a personality. I mean sure, that personality isn't the same from day to day - it fluctuates, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

I believe it's right to say that a person makes choices, not that the collection of influences that went into shaping them is making the choices.

It sounds to me, as though Tommo is perhaps trying to explain an Atheist world view. The only problem is that it is a view that seems contrary to most human experience. Nothing wrong with that, it is just going to be a very hard sell. Water is wet? Hmmm, obviously, just as obvious that people can make different choices, because they are FREE to do as they WILL.

I think free will is overrated.

It was probably originally an excuse God used to explain His accidental creation of sentient life. I can almost imagine His thought process:

"Yeah, sure; I meant for those apes to think for themselves, to know that they exist and can do something about it, to know that their actions can influence their lives, and their neighbor's lives, for better or worse. I did it on purpose... Yeah, that's the ticket! And now all the horrible mistakes they make in their lives, all the shit they do to each other because they can imagine it, well, now it's their fault because I gave them, um, let me think of a good name... free will. Sure, Free Will. I should write that down. Hey, now I'm off the hook for the sentience bit! Perfect! I'm a god!"

Seriously though, I think the whole concept of Free Will (caps intended) is a bit of a dodge. Of course we can all make decisions for ourselves, of course those decisions will be possibly different from person to person, based on countless variables, and yes, even if there were a predetermined nature to the world, a "God's Plan," as my old man used to call it, we are each and all still fully capable of throwing a wrench into that Plan with one ill-considered choice.

I think the primary problem here isn't whether we have free will, but whether any of us are qualified to properly wield it. The secondary problem is our use of Fee Will as an excuse for the crap we do... sort of like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for being an idiot, for being selfish, and for doing bad things to others. When we do something stupid, we invoke Free Will to either say "I had no choice, it's all been determined," or "Hey, God gave me free will; I can do whatever I want."

Beyond that, Free Will is about as esoteric a concept as there can be, almost literally illusory. We generally wander through our lives barely aware we exist, rarely if ever conscious of the potentials of our wills, and of our ability and tendency to touch/hurt/consume other people ... to imagine we would even know we're exercising free will, even when we are, much less take time to consider the "freedom" of our actions or their contingency on all other actions happening around us, seems almost absurd; and a bit sophomoric.

In other words, Free Will is an illusion, even if/though it exists. Make the best decisions you can, and leave the "free" part to the Wind. It was God's screw-up, after all, let Him deal with the question!

I choose now to stop writing this blather.

Darkmatters, we're hitting on that point again. It's obvious humans are the ones making the choices, but the choices themselves are determined by various forces acting upon us. When these factors are the things dictating the decisions we make, how can we say our decisions are free? I say again, it's the inclusion of the word "free" that is the point of contention here. No one is saying that humans don't have a will. But although we make choices, we cannot choose to act against that which influences our choices. And by invoking the idea of individual identity, what you're basically saying is, "I may be a puppet and my strings may control my actions, but I have a face and that's all the freedom I need". I don't think I could call myself an absolute determinist, as I believe there is room for randomness. But whether we are controlled by predictable forces, by random forces, or a mixture of both, I don't see any room for true freedom.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I think free will is overrated.

It was probably originally an excuse God used to explain His accidental creation of sentient life. I can almost imagine His thought process:

"Yeah, sure; I meant for those apes to think for themselves, to know that they exist and can do something about it, to know that their actions can influence their lives, and their neighbor's lives, for better or worse. I did it on purpose... Yeah, that's the ticket! And now all the horrible mistakes they make in their lives, all the shit they do to each other because they can imagine it, well, now it's their fault because I gave them, um, let me think of a good name... free will. Sure, Free Will. I should write that down. Hey, now I'm off the hook for the sentience bit! Perfect! I'm a god!"

Seriously though, I think the whole concept of Free Will (caps intended) is a bit of a dodge. Of course we can all make decisions for ourselves, of course those decisions will be possibly different from person to person, based on countless variables, and yes, even if there were a predetermined nature to the world, a "God's Plan," as my old man used to call it, we are each and all still fully capable of throwing a wrench into that Plan with one ill-considered choice.

I think the primary problem here isn't whether we have free will, but whether any of us are qualified to properly wield it. The secondary problem is our use of Fee Will as an excuse for the crap we do... sort of like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for being an idiot, for being selfish, and for doing bad things to others. When we do something stupid, we invoke Free Will to either say "I had no choice, it's all been determined," or "Hey, God gave me free will; I can do whatever I want."

Beyond that, Free Will is about as esoteric a concept as there can be, almost literally illusory. We generally wander through our lives barely aware we exist, rarely if ever conscious of the potentials of our wills, and of our ability and tendency to touch/hurt/consume other people ... to imagine we would even know we're exercising free will, even when we are, much less take time to consider the "freedom" of our actions or their contingency on all other actions happening around us, seems almost absurd; and a bit sophomoric.

In other words, Free Will is an illusion, even if/though it exists. Make the best decisions you can, and leave the "free" part to the Wind. It was God's screw-up, after all, let Him deal with the question!

I choose now to stop writing this blather.

Well said!

Even if we did live in a predetermined world there would be no way to predict what will happen, since that obviously brings up quite a few paradoxes. Since our actions are predetermined it means that we do not have free will, I agree that it is wholly an esoteric concept. We still exert the ability to choose however, not that it allows us to change the future but the world of atoms is so incredibly small that even if everything is predetermined it plays an absolutely negligible role in our lives. The choice of which ice cream you will pick has already been determined but which you will choose remains a mystery to everyone and thus it is safe to say that in the everyday world we can attribute that choice to the person themselves.

A predetermined world plays absolutely no role in our lives whatsoever and really can't be used as an argument to justify ones choice.

So then you don't believe anyone is responsible for their own actions? Should no one be punished when they commit some terrible act? Or commended for doing the right thing?

It honestly still sounds like you guys are going by the other description - I've already said I'm using "The ability to make choices". And if nobody could make choices, then we'd all be sitting at the first intersection we ever encountered (metaphorically speaking of course - none of us would have made it past learning to walk in order to make it to driving).

But like I said before, this whole thing is ridiculous - what's the point of talking about hypotheticals that are impossible? A person to a large extent IS his influences. They're a part of him. Of course he can't remove them completely from the equation - essentially become nobody, not even a mind anymore - before making decisions. It's sort of like the physicist's joke Leonard mentioned on Big Bang Theory once - "But it only works if the chickens are spherical and existing in a total vacuum."

We don't live in a vacuum - we can't be separated from our influences. Of COURSE they influence us all the time - that's why they're called influences! But we do make choices. And as I've pointed out - humans have the apparatus to deal with far more complex decision-making than any other animal ever has.

So yeah - as I've also already said - if you insist on adding the whole "completely free of internal or external influence" part then you're not even talking bout anything physically possible.

I guess anybody who believes strongly in the whole Buddhist thing, that self is an illusion, would think it's not actually 'me' making decisions, but only the web of factors that make up what we call "me". I'm just saying that web of factors at some point melds together and becomes a self - me - that then makes decisions. Just as you can't take apart beef stew and get carrots and a cow and wheat - you can't dissect a person into their constituent parts and have anything left to work with. Those factors have ceased to be discreet things anymore - they're now indelibly a part of the entity called You. And it takes an entity to make decisions - a gene can't do it unless that gene is part of a complete and living being.

But I'm taking my pin out of the table - this whole pins and angels game just never ends, does it?

Wow this thread has been quite active in my absence. After reading through some posts a new question arrived to my head, which is the following. Why do we always have to think, and think, and think... and think. About everything. Whatever it may be, it is quite amusing and I will continue to think. Forming my own opinion on matters I find to be of curious nature is what I believe, my free will. I personally believe free will is not something to be explained in words. Words don't get the trick done in such as a manner as an actual feeling does.

Every question makes another thousand arise. Will it ever end? Who knows... I don't care.

I think as long as we have a government controlling the vast majority of our lives, we will never truly have free will.
Maybe the undiscovered tribes in the Amazon have lots of free will.
I think the rules of society also are placed in front of our free will. I want to do this, but society says it's wrong... etc

Very nice leerveneer, I feel the same way about society. From the moment you're born you are told which is good or evil, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. These things are so deep engraved in your brain that you start feeling guilty about certain things you do, but sometimes you also start feeling better.

What would it be like to forget EVERYTHING that society has taught you? To start over. Who would you be? Still the same person? I don't think so. I'm not entirely sure where I'm trying to direct this to, I'm just speaking my mind.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

So then you don't believe anyone is responsible for their own actions? Should no one be punished when they commit some terrible act? Or commended for doing the right thing?

Ultimately, no, I don't think anyone is responsible for the kind of person they turn out to be or the decisions they make in life. And in this context, no, punishing people because they deserve it doesn't quite add up. If you come to the conclusion that free will doesn't exist, then you kinda have to accept that things like retribution, hatred, pride and guilt don't make a lot of sense. Sam Harris touched on this in that video I posted.

When I say the idea of punishing people doesn't add up, I don't mean we should get rid of prisons and just let people do as they like without consequence. Prisons exist to protect society from dangerous individuals and so it's quite obvious we need them. But the "eye for an eye" mentality, the idea that we should make a criminal suffer as their victim suffered according to some kind of karmic balance, that idea is irrational to me. When the crime has been committed, putting the criminal through untold misery isn't going to put things right with the world. It's not going to undo what's been done and so doesn't make sense. But what would make sense is making an effort to figure out what caused them to commit the crime in the first place and doing what we can to prevent it from happening again.

Pretty much the same goes for commending people who do the right thing. Although it doesn't really make sense to take pride in your accomplishments, it still matters that you accomplish things. Having a fatalistic attitude like "Well, if I have no free will, why should I even try?" is quite silly and not at all constructive. If you do good things and make a constant effort to correct your flaws, it makes a positive different to society and to everyone in it.

And yeah, I pretty much still am going by the other definition of free will here. As I said, I don't contest the fact that humans make choices. But if you're going to say that we make free choices, then that's another matter. That's the point I was just trying to emphasize. We may not be creatures of pure instinct, but there are countless other factors that constrain us just as much, to the point of making any truly free choice an impossibility.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

I guess anybody who believes strongly in the whole Buddhist thing, that self is an illusion, would think it's not actually 'me' making decisions, but only the web of factors that make up what we call "me". I'm just saying that web of factors at some point melds together and becomes a self - me - that then makes decisions. Just as you can't take apart beef stew and get carrots and a cow and wheat - you can't dissect a person into their constituent parts and have anything left to work with. Those factors have ceased to be discreet things anymore - they're now indelibly a part of the entity called You. And it takes an entity to make decisions - a gene can't do it unless that gene is part of a complete and living being.

Well, that's the thing. I don't exactly subscribe to the idea of the self either. Though the self you're talking about may be a bit different from the definition I'm using here. When I say the self, I'm basically talking about an unique agent within you that pulls the levers and effectively drives the entire system. It comes back to the point that was discussed earlier in the thread of changing places with another person, atom for atom and the effect that would have on your decisions. If you accept that you are simply the physical components that make you up, then you must also accept that if you put yourself in another person's body, you would be that person. You wouldn't be the same mind in a different body, you would be a different mind in a different body. As such, you would feel how they feel, think how they think and make all they same decisions they would make. To argue otherwise is to argue that there is something more to us. That there is some static, unchanging essence of who we are that exists independent of everything else and could choose to do things differently than someone else despite being in the exact same circumstances. What you'd practically be arguing for there is the existence of a soul.

Holy hell! Long post, but there ya go.

Originally Posted by leerveneer

I think as long as we have a government controlling the vast majority of our lives, we will never truly have free will.
Maybe the undiscovered tribes in the Amazon have lots of free will.
I think the rules of society also are placed in front of our free will. I want to do this, but society says it's wrong... etc

One problem with this argument - people break laws and the rules of society all the time. So I guess if that's your definition then you've just demonstrated that we actually do have free will. And I suspect Amazonian tribes have just as many rules of social conduct as anybody else.

Sleeper, I guess like so many things we try to discuss in Philosophy it all comes down to how you define things. My idea of self includes the influences that you seem to consider external to self. So to me, if a person chooses to do something, it's their own decision, even though I agree their influences played a part - undoubtedly a huge part even. But I do see your point - it's that pesky word free that screws everything up.

Originally Posted by Sageous

I think free will is overrated.



Beyond that, Free Will is about as esoteric a concept as there can be, almost literally illusory. We generally wander through our lives barely aware we exist, rarely if ever conscious of the potentials of our wills, and of our ability and tendency to touch/hurt/consume other people ... to imagine we would even know we're exercising free will, even when we are, much less take time to consider the "freedom" of our actions or their contingency on all other actions happening around us, seems almost absurd; and a bit sophomoric.

Sageous, I am not sure how much of this is satirical or humor? I thought both of us were attempting to teach other members to live different than this. I though that was what your RRC lesson focused on. With all my decades of awareness training, I do not feel like your discription aboves fits my life much.

^ Good point Sivason! It really does seem odd that so many people on a lucid dreaming forum would essentially say they believe people are nothing but automatons with no awareness or decision-making capabilities. That's pretty much the opposite of lucidity and dream control, isn't it? Isn't the idea basically that if you become lucid in waking life then you can be lucid and exercise control in dreams?

^^ "Free" does seem to be be the operative word here; or is it inoperative?

Originally Posted by Heavy Sleeper

What you'd practically be arguing for there is the existence of a soul.

Maybe that is indeed what you guys are arguing. Is that a bad thing? Perhaps "free will" is just a corollary of soul?

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

Sleeper, I guess like so many things we try to discuss in Philosophy it all comes down to how you define things. My idea of self includes the influences that you seem to consider external to self. So to me, if a person chooses to do something, it's their own decision, even though I agree their influences played a part - undoubtedly a huge part even. But I do see your point - it's that pesky word free that screws everything up.

Exactly. It's the definitions that keep throwing up barriers here. When you have to put such complex ideas into words in order to express them, things get muddied up and no one really understands what others are trying to say. But hell, I'm an optimist. I'm sure one day in the future, we'll figure out a way to communicate thoughts and feelings directly without the need for definitions or descriptions. When that day comes, we'll all be able to truly understand each other on a level we've never experienced before and all petty human conflicts will be consigned to history.

....well, that's the hope anyway.

One description I saw said "The ability to make choices without influence from external factors"

I guess this is what I'm really talking about, since I consider the internal influences (my experiences, biases emotions etc) to be a part of me. So it's the same thing people mean when they say "He signed the confession of his own free will, with no coercion".