Please point it out here. Or anywhere. By anyone. An actual, real world example.
He gave a couple of examples, but he also said
It would be interesting to see how someone would show conclusively that free will is entirely an illusion and that human behavior was every bit as determined as the path of a billiard ball. Looks like a stalemate to me.
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It’s nice to be a determinist, because then you can absolve yourself of any accountability or blame. But we know better.
Sometimes we can hold ourselves responsible to an unreasonable degree as when a survivor feels responsible for all who perish. But I agree we should know better than to glibly absolve all we do that does not end well as our fate.
Remember that at the end.
Where is it necessary to show free will in the first place. In any actual instance? A real example. And how is it falsifiable? Determinism isn’t Newtonian.
Neither side can be proven - like many things - but in my view it’s not a stalemate. Let’s ask where the weight of evidence sits?
Firstly, let’s ask where should we expect to find evidence of free will?
In the mathematics of physics? No, as we define it, it’s a higher order function so the best evidences are to be found in the interactions of living creatures with certain capabilities. So… human society is our best source of evidence.
What kinds of evidence should we expect to find?
Evidence from human societies, across all societies, that people can and do make choices - good or bad (however you want to define that - functional or moral.) Evidence of self-awareness of ability to make choices. Ways of regulating those behaviours for society, of beliefs of responsibility, of ways of shaping and influencing that responsibility, teaching, moral codes, laws, enforcement for those that can damage others, of emotional responses to choices… In my earlier post I laid many of these out in my arguments.
Do we have these kinds of evidences?
Abundantly, in every human society. The evidences are overwhelming, across nearly every aspect of human society. People live and act and our societies are built on the assumption of responsibility, teaching responsibility to children, laws, holding people accountable, change of mind, learning, etc. Blame, shame, guilt, admiration for people who overcome or do good… (all pointless and meaningless if we only have one choice.)
Alternative is the illusion of free will
If free will does not exist, and humans could not make choices, then the ILLUSION of free will and all of these mechanisms is a completely unnecessary phantasmagoria and delusion. We have evolved the human brain - the most complex object in the universe we know of - a pinnacle of evolution - that completely deludes us about reality. We live out a pantomime of personal responsibility. As stated in my point 8 of my argument, the people who claim to believe this contradict their stated belief every day.
I find this alternative doesn’t make best sense of the evidence. Occam’s razor, weight of evidence… My view.
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To me it is a no-brainer. Determinism is absurd on the face of it.
When I said it was a stalemate I just meant in terms of convincing someone who disagrees.
I would find it easier to accept I might be wrong about the nature of what gives rise to God belief than that we have no free will at all.
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Why is determinism absurd? What makes human will, purpose, agency, desire, ‘choice’ independent of nature, of previously existing causes?
I’m astounded that you can’t actually give a single meaningful real world example and yet can give a dozen ‘proofs’ of this phenomenon.
Human nature is absolutely grounded in the same well spring of drive toward homeostasis as all other life. But our perception of [quote=“Klax, post:74, topic:46090”]
human will, purpose, agency, desire
[/quote] is what we need to explain. Dismissing it as an illusion does a lousy job of that. That we have the same drive toward homeostasis as every other creature is a given. But how then do we explain self sacrifice in battle or even suicide? Obviously we are able to step back from that essential drive and over ride it at times based on the overlay of culture or even just our individual analysis run amuck. We have some degree of freedom to screw around with our mammalian programming and even our cultural programming. We can and some do say no more, I’m out. How do you explain that if there is no freedom in the system? Of course that freedom is constrained and that is for the best. Our mammalian programming is a useful foundation and mother culture adds to that in important ways. But we do have some freedom in resolving those useful but sometimes conflicting drives. Some might prefer to be free from even what limited freedom we do have since indecision is itself stressful. But our humanity saddles us with the need to choose our path. I know the sophomoric philosophic puzzle would ask “and how do you know the path we end up choosing wasn’t settled long before we went through the motions of deciding”? At that point I say fine you go on answering the Sphinx’s question, I’ve got other fish to fry.
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I’m confused by your comment and wonder at your definition of free will.
Tomorrow I’ll eat my breakfast with a teaspoon instead of a larger spoon because this is not a predictable response to your comment, but just something I’ve chosen to do. There’s an example.
The only thing that counts is faith expressed through love:
I’m choosing to love my wife through an intensely difficult period, even though it mostly hurts me, because that’s love. Every act of love is a choice, and without that free choice it is meaningless: it is not love. My car is an enormous help in getting me around, but it doesn’t love me.
I have no definition. Beyond the ability to choose between different courses of action unimpeded. Whatever that means.
You’ve chosen to eat your breakfast with a teaspoon tomorrow precisely because I asked you to demonstrate free will. All seems pretty deterministic to me.
I never stopped loving my wife either. Couldn’t if I wanted to. It made no difference. That’s determinism for you. My wife couldn’t help herself. Worst suffering of my life. Good luck.
But that is a rejection of determinism not a rejection of the compatibility. Influence is partial causality. In determinism (which presumes time-ordered cauasality) all causes must originate outside the person because there is time when the person does not exist.
9. Physical determinism was disproven by the tests of Bell’s inequality, which showed that there are no hidden variables determining the outcome of some events.
10. Free will is not universal so it is quite possible that people who believe in determinism don’t have any free will to speak of. There are numerous habits that destroy free will and habit of thought and likely to be among the worst of these.
The answer to the Strangler’s question is man. Human drives, emotions, thoughts, feelings, behaviour, motivation, conditioning, needs are all very very real. I haven’t met a heroin addict yet who would have chosen to become one. None of them chose their parents, friends, peers, school. I still haven’t the faintest idea what free will is that it justifies suffering.
Ok, we define it differently. If free will was what you implied I wouldn’t disagree.
You do have a definition that is implied in your application: that if any action is influenced by a preceding action it is caused by the action. That we are influenced by external factors and that our life is lived as part of a chain of events within time is not in dispute, but it doesn’t address the questions of free will.
Free will in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints. (Free will | Definition, Determinism, & Facts | Britannica)
- A billiard ball hit by another billiard ball will act precisely according to the laws of physics. You can predict and cause the ball to go where you want if you take into account all the factors.
- A human hit by a circumstance can respond in any number of ways. The response from any individual is not always predictable, even from the person’s normal patterns of behaviour. Sometimes this unpredictability drives us crazy or delights us - and the evidence to me stacks up that this is because at the peak of evolution or creation is the agency that God gifted us with.
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I’ve always liked the expression I will if I want and I will if I don’t want if I want. I actually do that when walking. I don’t want to go that way, so I do.
First of all… I am an incompatibilist libertarian. So I agree with your conclusion that free will exists. But just because the conclusion is correct doesn’t mean an argument for that conclusion is sound. And I don’t think your argument is sound – though my first disagreement is actually on the other side, where you have overlooked one source of evidence.
…in the experimental results of physics? Yes.
The test of Bell’s inequality shows that there are no hidden variables in the scientific worldview to determine the outcome in some events. Then chaotic dynamics shows that this is relevant to macroscopic events. This is exactly what you would expect to find if free will exists.
Without this the whole idea of free will would be dead in the water. It does not prove that free will does exist, but it is consistent with the possibility. It is kind of like the big bang… it doesn’t prove God created the universe but it is consistent with the possibility.
There is no proof of that whatsoever – just the opposite. While there is a gap in the causality of events on the smallest scale. We find no such gaps on the higher scale. Therefore I think there is good justification for free will being a part of the very definition of the phenomenon of life itself.
sorry… no.
The evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
The evidence for the universe having a beginning 13.8 billion years ago is overwhelming.
The evidence for relativity is overwhelming.
How do I know? The vast majority of scientists agree with these conclusions because of evidence from many different directions.
How about free will? There is no majority of scientists agreeing to any such thing. There is little that they can even point to as objective evidence either way. So the only “overwhelming evidence” are yours (and mine) subjective reasons for believing it exists. I suspect the very nature of free will precludes the possibility of objective evidence – there is a logical inconsistency because objective evidence is all about the part of reality which has no regard for freedom of will.
The assumptions of people all over the world is VERY POOR evidence for the fundamental nature of reality (or human existence) because for most of our history we have seen only a very small portion of reality (including the reality of ourselves). This is revealed by the fact that in modern times our awareness of reality has been expanding at an accelerating pace.
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