r/philosophy • u/IAI_Admin IAI • Sep 30 '19
Video Free will may not exist, but it's functionally useful to believe it does; if we relied on neuroscience or physical determinism to explain our actions then we wouldn't take responsibility for our actions - crime rates would soar and society would fall apart
https://iai.tv/video/the-chemistry-of-freedom?access=all&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=reddit46
u/moopsh Sep 30 '19
Isn’t it more functionally useful to say “criminal x may not be INDIVIDUALLY responsible for crime y, but in order to discourage crime y in the future, it must provoke both individual legal consequences (+rehabilitation) AND systemic diagnosis”?
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u/Razzerdazzer Sep 30 '19
What interests me is how we abhore people that do vicious crimes even though they never had a real say in whether they would do them or not. They're essentially victims of their fate just as their victims are.
Scorning them for their acts might discourage them and/or others from commiting the crime in the future but we form such personal feelings of hatred for people even though all they essentially did was "roll poorly" in a game of DnD.
At the same time, we reward people who "rolled" well. Every accomplishment is essentially "rng" - no different from a cast of dice. Take two people born in subpar living conditions with poor prospects. If one of them works hard to succeed despite the odds and the other didn't, it wasn't because one "chose" to succeed. They simply struck it lucky with the combination of their genes and environment (if that can be said).
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u/bad_apiarist Oct 01 '19
they never had a real say in whether they would do them or not.
This premise is false. What it means to be responsible for an action is not whether processes are deterministic or not, but whether the proximate processes are inside the actor or not. Those processes are the person insomuch as anything can ever be said to be a person. A person who harms others understood the consequences of their actions and chose to proceed under those terms. That, the cognitive features that lead to the choice is what makes them morally responsible exactly because those features are deterministic. They are (a) intrinsic, (b) harmful, and (c) reliable. That means that we, the others, must take steps to stop them and we do that partially thanks to our morally tuned emotions that naturally understand all of this. We stop them by removing them from society, attempting to change their cognitive features, and by creating disincentives which change the input values for such choices which due to a,b,c reliably dissuade others.
Moral responsibility is actually only possible because of determinism.
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u/chilipeppers314 Oct 01 '19
He means that our emotional response (hating them for it) is irrational. I agree, but it’s a useful response for influencing behavior through norms so it’s not as though it’s something we should put a stop to.
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u/Razzerdazzer Oct 01 '19
I disagree with your assessment of my claim. No matter how I try to interpret the phrase you quoted, I do not get 'responsibility' out of it. I simply meant the deterministic nature of their actions, and frankly I do not understand how you read it as anything but.
I agree with your dissuasion argument — in fact I believe I said something very similar — except for the part about it being reliable. For shoplifting and tax evasion it might be, but for vicious crimes it rarely is.
As for moral responsibility only being possible because of determinism, I suppose it is true in the sense that due to the deterministic nature of nature, everything is a result of and only possible due to it. However, imagine a Universe where this is not the case. Could its 'free agents' not create and abide by a moral system?
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u/sw3gg1ty_b3n Oct 01 '19
Proximate processes being internal is completely juxtaposed with free will. Sure if you go back a couple causes they might be internal, but if you continue to go back, all causes are external. So while you might be able to control how you act for a given event, you don’t have any real agency in why you control the event in said manor, since every cause was external if you go back far enough.
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u/dzmisrb43 Oct 01 '19
What are you talking about ?
So person with brain tumor who went mad and. killed someone because of it is controlled.
But person who doesn't have brain tumor can be held accountable.
It doesn't make sense in both cases it's just brain structure that determines action.
And how can conciousness that arises from brain be held accountable for brain structure it's born into?
I watched Ted talk where a kid who was aggressive and wanted to kill had operation on brain and started behaving differently because he didn't have tumor anymore.So with tumor which is just change of structure of brain that "network" (how you put it)can't be held accountable but without brain tumor he is suddenly network that can be held accountable.But what changed other than brain structure?
So it is some conciousness in both cease with brain tumor and without it. So brian isn't what you are it can be changed if you have unfortunate structure but you still remain you. So whats your point?
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u/Awwkaw Oct 01 '19
They're essentially victims of their fate just as their victims are.
Here you imply the lack of free will.
Scorning them for their acts might discourage them and/or others from commiting the crime in the future
Here you imply free will.
The argument only holds if three will is both a thing and not thing in my ears.
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u/Diogonni Oct 02 '19
But determinism hasn’t been scientifically proven yet though. So how can we say that it is all determined if we don’t know that?
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u/Razzerdazzer Oct 02 '19
Humanity makes certain assumptions for practicality's sake. In science, everything starts as a hypothesis, and when enough 'proof' has been gathered, it becomes a 'theory', and assuming rigorous peer reviewing and correct study procedures, we tend to operate under the assumption that these theories are correct until/unless proven otherwise.
We do the same in our daily lives on a smaller scale: if we see someone that looks very much like our neighbour Bob in front of their house with a dog that looks very much like theirs, we assume it is Bob without having all the knowledge in the world to back that up. We might even claim it a fact if/when sharing it with others, when in theory it could be that it was someone that simply looked very much like our neighbour, has a dog that looked very much like theirs and they both happened to be in front of the house of the neighbour. Unlikely, but possible.
Likewise, we assume that our understanding of laws of physics is correct. If so, we do not need to conduct brain related red button pressing studies to 'prove' determinism. Determinism is a logical result of our already accepted science.
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u/IgnoreTheKetchup Oct 18 '19
People never had a real say in abhoring them. Hate is an instinct of humans meant to discourage others from certain behavior.
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u/auctor_ignotus Oct 01 '19
Free will was invented to hold individuals accountable, to grossly paraphrase Nietzsche. It’s an old idea, and an interesting one.
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u/A-ZAF_Got_Banned Oct 01 '19
I still have the same moral responsibility for murdering someone as a vending machine that did the same thing, you're talking legal responsibility.
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u/IAI_Admin Sep 30 '19
Neuroscientist Patrick Haggard, Templeton prize-winning cosmologist George Ellis, and philosopher of the mind Jennifer Hornsby debate whether free will is an illusion, top down versus bottom up causation, and whether exceptions to human free will leave the question open as to whether humans have free will at all.
Jennifer argues in favour of free will, where there are causal explanations for actions. Jennifer warns against confusing 'actions' with 'events' and makes the case that we are causal agents, and should see our actions not as events but as the way we move through the world. The panel discuss exceptions to free will such as patients with depressed amygdala who believe they have free will but are effectively controlled by their brains.
George Ellis argues in favour of a deterministic world based on context and culture. He cites the 2013 Oscar Pistorius shooting as a case study for the absence of free will, where voluntary action disguises the reality that Pistorius' action was overwhelmingly influenced by context. Ellis also discusses language, and the way in which people from different countries have brains that are differently wired to speak different languages.
Patrick Haggard disagrees that this is context or culture and argues instead that this is to do with neuron stimulation. He focuses on mechanism, and celebrates the development of self understanding brought about by Santiago Ramon y Cajal and his 'neuron doctrine' which identified, visualised and drew a single neuron. Santiago Ramon y Cajal recognised that the brain consists of lots of individual neurons, each of which is in some ways simple, but each has a different morphology and they collect different messages and pass them on in different ways. Haggard describes philosophical concepts of 'free will' or scientific concepts of 'determinism' as magic, and argues that we should 'keep magic out until the last moment' and to 'use Occams razor'.
Haggard and Hornsby disagree in that Hornsby argues humans possess free will in a way that other animals do not, in their ability to explain their actions, whereas Haggard insists that humans are no different from sea snails, or the pets that we train. Haggard also describes an experiment where people who've read a deterministic explanation of actions are more likely to cheat in a game. He also describes a case where a man's brain tumour was diagnosed by the sudden onset of paedophilic tendencies.
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u/IronOreBetty Sep 30 '19
This is functionally the same argument for believing in God.
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u/dcabines Sep 30 '19
Agreed. It sounds like the argument "If you don't believe in Hell you'll become an amoral psychopath.", but that is nonsense of course. As though we're all just a step away from tearing society apart and becoming animals.
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u/QiPowerIsTheBest Sep 30 '19
Right. Even if I thought I had no free will it's still not in my benefit to be anti-social.
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u/Bergerking21 Sep 30 '19
That sounds like a straw man of a reasonable argument. The real argument is something like: Society has been built on a long history of religious values, and while some are definitely bad, we can’t be sure that disregarding whatever wisdom from religion we want will leave us more moral than if we continue to do things such as believe in God.
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u/HorselickerYOLO Oct 01 '19
The problem is then people value feelings, traditions, and faith more than evidence and reason. Why would you be swayed by reason when the most important things in life you believe on faith?
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u/AlM96 Oct 01 '19
What is the glue that is holding us all together?
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u/dcabines Oct 01 '19
Humans are social creatures. Our brains are hardwired to require social interaction for our happiness and long term mental stability. This makes us inherently tribal. For much of human history we lived in tribes. Tribalism, however, promotes war and petty fights between tribes.
With agriculture we created civilization and cities. This allowed for specialization and fostered peace which provided some level of safety for people living in the city. If you were born in a city and made a living as a basket weaver, for example, you probably don't have the skills to walk off into the wilderness alone and survive. So it is in your best interest to stay in and support your society.
So the glue holding society together is how our brains work and mutual survival and the alternative is far less comfortable than what society can offer us. Those things are a stronger glue than abstract ideas of free will or punishment in an after life.
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Sep 30 '19
Understand the cause and effect involved in this. One's understanding of the universe, the meaning of life, etc have a direct impact on one's behavior.
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u/meizhong Sep 30 '19 edited Oct 05 '25
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Sep 30 '19
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u/OVdose Oct 01 '19
That is not at all the definition of free will used by most philosophers who study that specific topic. It's like this whole thread is arguing against an outdated notion of free will that no modern philosopher actually proposes.
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u/meizhong Sep 30 '19 edited Oct 05 '25
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u/WeAreAllApes Oct 01 '19
When phrased badly, but it doesn't have to be.
Compatibilism and its newer analogues don't require anyone to actually believe in free will, only to behave as if we do. It sounds similar, but the similar argument for believing in God is fundamentally dishonest whereas the compatibilist argument is prescriptive in how we should treat others. It's not dishonest if we say it clearly: "I do not believe that you have free will, but I intend to treat you as if you do."
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u/omodulous Oct 01 '19 edited Oct 01 '19
Right it's too straight forward to fully represent what would really happen. For one it's not in people's best interest to harm each other. Low crime helps everyone. Things will always trend towards people cooperating.
It's too simple to just jump to the conclusion that everyone would go mad.
It's not like animals are like that, if they are fed and healthy they are mostly content just laying around.
What makes more sense to say is people won't have the will to do anything without a sense of purpose. Which again I think this is also something people tell themselves to not think about it not being a thing. It's so beyond people to think that it's ok to not have a purpose. Not inherently at least.
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Sep 30 '19
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u/Treaduse Sep 30 '19
It’s functionally the same as a slippery slope “argument”.
“If you stop believing in X, that will lead to bad consequences A, B, and C.”
They are bad arguments.
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u/Treaduse Sep 30 '19
Yeah it’s a slippery slope “argument,” which are almost always not very helpful.
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u/Beangoblin Oct 01 '19
I'm glad someone noticed.
It's essentially an argument from consequences, it's irrelevant to what is or isn't true. Lying to yourself because it's advantageous, something atheists usually ridicule religious people for. Pretty ironic
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u/amoebius Sep 30 '19
The headline of this post editorializes an opinion (presumably the poster’s) that does not fairly characterize the content of the link, but seems to contradict or ward off at least a portion of it. It’s an interesting collection of points of view, and it seems a shame to put up the barrier of making it seem too dogmatic for general interest. But, after all, maybe OP couldn’t help that.
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u/EricTheNerd2 Sep 30 '19
I was predestined to believe in free will.
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u/Valmar33 Sep 30 '19
Which is a logical argument.
Every single thing we do in everyday life presupposes the existence of free will.
That is, you can make a decision between various choices, and decide on what you want to do.
We do this, all of the time, effortlessly.
Almost like we have free will...
But, what "free will" is, is anyone's guess. Almost a big of an issue of what "consciousness" is. A millennia-old debate that's never yet ended...
Probably will never end, lolz.
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u/Kldran Oct 01 '19
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the incompatiblist arguments consist of trying to define free will and getting caught up in details that don't fit. Like insisting free will must mean the outcome can't be pre-determined. Ignoring how often people will make the same decisions over and over and over again.
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
Agreed.
Having free will doesn't mean being able to do absolutely anything.
I feel like the definition of "free will" used by incompatiblists is often a strawman based on a misunderstanding of how compatiblists define it.
Then discussions go absolutely nowhere, because different meanings are assumed.
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u/ItsFuckingScience Sep 30 '19
Sure you “decide” what you want to do between various choices, but there are multiple underlying factors than influence you leading up to and during the choosing moment.
Simply choosing one action out of several options isn’t necessarily evidence of free will. Maybe you were always going to choose what you did, and free will is simply an illusion?
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
Simply choosing one action out of several options isn’t necessarily evidence of free will. Maybe you were always going to choose what you did, and free will is simply an illusion?
How do you know this to be the case, though?
For me, free will is as simple as being able to make decisions in the first place.
When you were writing this post, you didn't just blindly, thoughtlessly bang it out, I'll bet.
You thought about what response you were going to make, even if subconsciously, and then leaned towards various responses over others, for reasons only you understand.
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u/caesar15 Oct 01 '19
But all of their actions and experiences in the past led them to write their response like that. It doesn’t matter if they thought about it or leaned towards one side or not. Determinism doesn’t mean thoughtlessness.
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u/Mylaur Oct 01 '19
Free will is not making decisions. You could simply have the illusion of choice, and in reality you were predestined to pick THAT decision. It doesn't even help that neurobiology shows your brain knows your decision seconds before you do.
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u/AlM96 Oct 01 '19
I'm still not sure how free will is defined. Does free will mean having the ability to choose decisions, or does it have to do with determinism, or that our genetic make up has disposed us to prefer certain things over another?
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u/RiseandSine Oct 01 '19
This argument is basically a single time line vs multiple where everyone makes trillions of decisions all the time, if there's no free will many things don't make sense especially philosophy.
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Oct 01 '19
but there are multiple underlying factors than influence you leading up to and during the choosing moment.
But that's what a choice is. If free will is defined as "a choice independent of the influence of context" then okay but why would you want to make a choice independent of context?
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u/Axthen Oct 01 '19
After studying Biology for a pittance of time (only 5 years now), I have come to my own “conclusion on free will, to this end.
1: Free-Will is something unique to humans
And
2: Free-Will is our innate ability to not act on basal, genetically inherited instinct.
While I will certainly agree that all of our actions are based on previous contexts, our ability to “not kill that injured animal and eat it, and instead help it” is what makes us human. Every other animal would kill it, but we actively go against what nature would mandate, nay, has encoded into our very genomes. It’s ourselves that get to decide who we are and what we do, not our genetics. Which is amazing.
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
Hmmmm.
I would disagree.
Animals also have free will. What makes us different from most other animals?
No free will ~ but differences in psychological makeup, being a much more social species than not, very different morals, ethics, etc.
Our morals and ethics come from being raised in a certain way. Therefore, wild animals learn their morals and ethics from generations upon generations of their parents doing the same stuff.
Pet animals can be raised different, but we can only teach them so much, due to the species' barrier of psychology and language, but we can teach them to do this, or not do that, to whatever degree they're able to.
Some animals learn very easily, and have a great deal of patience, while others will just do whatever the fuck they want, no matter how hard you try and teach them. Even dogs or cats from the same litter can be this far apart in behaviour.
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u/I_think_charitably Sep 30 '19
Free will is the ability to choose that which would not benefit you over that which would.
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u/Jdikii Oct 01 '19
That's ridiculous. You can be just as much predisposed to commit acts that aren't beneficial to you as you would be to make beneficial decisions. Arguably most people are already predisposed to act against their interests when they engage in sendentary and unhealthy lifestyles despite knowing full well how bad it is thanks to modern science. And what about addictive behavior? That's a very clear example of people choosing things that are bad for them, with arguable levels of control.
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u/MrVirtual Oct 01 '19
I think the takeaway is that humans make so many dumb, easily avoidable mistakes. Wild animals act in their best interest (or in some cases their species’ best interest) virtually 100% of the time.
Why is it that the species who prides its intelligence as the best in the game is so prone to acting completely irrationally?
To me it suggests that something about the human consciousness (as opposed to other species’) is uniquely free from the same instinctual decision making that binds the animal kingdom to rational behavior driven by evolutionary priorities.
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u/Vampyricon Oct 01 '19
But a calculator doesn't have free will. How can you trust it to give you the true answer?
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
And how do you know that the brain is like a calculator?
Most people aren't that good at mathematics.
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u/Vampyricon Oct 01 '19
Your argument applies to all deterministic systems. It doesn't matter whether the brain is a calculator (it isn't), it only matters that it is like a calculator in that it is deterministic.
So either one can actually obtain a correct option even in deterministic systems, therefore your argument is unsound, or you can't, in which case you shouldn't be using a calculator or google because they're deterministic systems that are unreliable.
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Oct 01 '19
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
That's a presumption.
To believe that it's "useful to survival", you have to presume a mechanistic form of natural selection.
To me, free will isn't something that evolved due to the cause and effect of physics.
I don't know what free will is, frankly. All I know is that exists, and that the Physicalist conceptualization of it isn't intuitive to me.
That is, a world of matter, where said matter, nor the laws of physics that control it all, has no free will or consciousness, cannot logically give rise to free will or consciousness. Especially given that the former is qualitatively vastly different to the latter.
Matter has no consciousness, no emotions, nor any idea of what logic is. Matter just... does stuff. Deterministically, yes, but without any sense of purpose.
Therefore, we should have no sense of purpose, and just be mere robots that cannot question anything, nor think or feel.
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u/OriginallyWhat Oct 01 '19
I was predestined not to. I still don't run around killing people and committing crimes. I don't think the correlation is really there.
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u/CronenbergFlippyNips Sep 30 '19 edited Sep 30 '19
Free will arguments are like philosophical masturbation. It might feel good at the time but it always leaves you feeling empty and unsatisfied when it's over.
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
I'm pro-free will, yet can still relate. :(
It's unsatisfying, because both sides, at the end of the day, fundamentally cannot understand the other side's perspective, leading to zero progress.
Such are most philosophical debates, at that...
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u/Ladis_Wascheharuum Sep 30 '19
Is it a rare argument that people should, in fact, be held responsible (and even punished) for things they do not freely choose?
The point of negative consequences (delivered either by society or by our own conscience) for immoral actions is, in my view, to serve as a deterrent to future immoral actions, or the immoral actions of others. So long as punishing criminals reduces crime, it does not really matter if any particular criminal decision is based in free will.
Punishing someone for a decision that they couldn't have made any other way feels wrong, but I don't believe that it actually is. The punishment is there to affect the outcome of decisions; as long as it does that, it has utility and can be justified (taking into account other effects, of course.)
I don't think free will exists. I think every human life, and the universe itself, already has a completely determined path. Every choice we make is a hard, inescapable calculation based on every event that led up to that point. We can only ever react in one way. But I still want criminals punished and heroes rewarded.
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u/sumguy720 Oct 01 '19
I think punishment makes sense in a world with free will, but rehabilitation makes sense in a world without. If the only mechanism you have to influence behaviour is to try to influence the person's choice you have to take on a very reactionary sort of system - where you have to impose a punishment harsh enough to convince the person in the moment of evil to make a different choice, like redirecting a railroad car just before it hits a pedestrian. It also leads to things like "Oh that person is evil, they do evil things because its an intrinsic part of who they are." which might lead the conversation away from rehabilitation.
But if you believe in physical determinism you can recognize evil 'choices' as stemming from a long and complex physical history, you might recognize that it can and needs to be addressed holistically to change the behaviour of the individual, changing the track that the railroad car was on in the first place.
Having well established consequences is important, perhaps essential, in deterring crime but early recognition of at risk individuals and systemic reform is ultimately the mechanism that will have the greatest social payoff over time.
The other thing is that you don't need agency to have responsibility, you just have to adapt the idea of responsibility to a system that doesn't involve agency. A faulty wire can be responsible for a house fire, so too can a person without free will be responsible for a theft or murder.
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u/UristMcDonald Oct 01 '19
In most cases yes, but you also have to recognize that some people can never be a functioning part of society, and are not going to accept help in the first place. Why should it being free will or not matter? You "made" a choice, whether or not "you" really had a say in it doesn't matter, you're still the same bad person.
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Oct 01 '19
What if you found out that punishment would actually increase the chance of certain criminals re-offending? Would it not be better to learn more about human behavior so that we can choose the specific inputs that will most likely lead to a desired outcome instead of just applying a blanket of punishment and hoping it will work?
For example, we already know providing some inmates with an opportunity for a highschool/college education and helping them achieve that reduces recidivism by a significant amount, whereas focusing solely upon punishment does not make our society any safer.
Not disagreeing that we should punish some people, but we should work on more effective ways to adjust behavior instead of applying punishment blindly and heavy-handedly.
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u/Ladis_Wascheharuum Oct 03 '19
Punishment is not a panacea. The value of punishment is in its deterrence of immoral actions. (Strictly speaking, the threat of punishment is the deterrent, but past immoral actions must be consistently punished to make the threat believable and practical.)
If immoral action can be prevented in ways that decrease the overall amount of suffering, I'm all for that.
In fact, I'm fascinated an inspired by aviation culture, where blame and punishment are discouraged in favor of root cause analysis aimed at preventing repeats of accidents. Punishment in that area is a deterrent to honest reporting, and honest reporting improves safety.
My only point was that assigning blame or responsibility is still possible to justify even without free will being taken as true. There are obviously other factors that go into the calculation.
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Oct 01 '19
Sort of. The problem is that it's hard to act all mighty if that were the case. Also, you really could argue that you're being evil, especially if you punish others. I don't think the idea of consequences and incentive systems is very fringe among people that are skeptical of free will. I'm pretty hard in that direction, and I still think there should be some notion of responsibility, even if it's a facade.
It's just that much of the reasoning we use ends up being very flawed, and nonsense really. That in and of itself is definitely meaningful to me. The idea of guilt tripping, saying how could you?, ect. and acting all self righteous, is just... stupid. The thing did what it did because it's in it's nature. You might as well be talking about evil demons possessing it at that point.
Interestingly, I don't think disgust gets talked about enough here. You can have a visceral feeling of hatred and anger without free will. People get upset at the tick attached to them, even though they're extremely aware that it doesn't exhibit free will. Nobody really thinks its "bad tick", that's being evil towards them. They don't talk about how they'd never go sucking blood, and act all self-righteous. Yet they still hate it, are willing to kill it, and feel no sympathy towards it.
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u/SalmonApplecream Oct 12 '19
If someone forced you to kill someone, you think you should be held responsible?
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u/Ladis_Wascheharuum Oct 12 '19
Probably not.
But the question is: Would holding me responsible be a good way of preventing future murders? That gets complicated. It's what leads to the concept of "not criminally responsible". If there is a set of circumstances where assigning responsibility does more harm than good, then it shouldn't be done.
I think if someone is being threatened with death, then they can reasonably be expected to do whatever it takes to survive, and most kinds of punishment (like prison time) cannot be expected to sway them, nor anyone else faced with the same circumstances in the future. For that reason, it would be counterproductive to hold them responsible.
Free will still doesn't matter here. The circumstances of the action do.
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u/iamastreamofcreation Sep 30 '19
I personally find it functionally useful to believe free will does not exist. I feel more compassion for myself and others.
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u/machinich_phylum Sep 30 '19
I could be wrong, but I perceive an implicit appeal to free will even in the framing, the idea that you choose to believe it doesn't exist because of what you perceive to be beneficial outcomes flowing downstream of that decision. Do you have an opinion on whether that belief is (or can be) justified? That is, is functionality your primary criteria, or merely the next one in line after truth has been exhausted?
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u/hilifegotrekt Sep 30 '19
If being told we aren't in control of our actions makes us act worse wouldn't that be an example of people choosing to be worse?
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u/youreveningcoat Sep 30 '19
If determinism is true, there will be no examples of people choosing anything. It seems like they choose to be worse but in fact that action was pre determined.
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u/hilifegotrekt Sep 30 '19
But if it is predetermined how could a person's action be changed by being primed either way? It just doesn't make sense to me maybe I'm just missing aomething
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u/youreveningcoat Sep 30 '19
Its hard to grasp, and most people are anti-determinism at first because it seems absurd to say we have no free will.
To answer your question, there is no "change" in the action. All actions are already predetermined. It may seem like you were going to do one thing and then changed to the second, but in fact it was always determined that you would do the second thing.
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u/bigblackcuddleslut Oct 01 '19
No. Your choices are influenced by your experiences. That does not necessarily mean you are in control of your choices.
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u/sumguy720 Oct 01 '19
Do you think you are capable of choosing something you do not want to choose? Where do you suppose your desire to choose one thing over another comes from?
For example, I have chosen to leave this comment (well... soon). I'm doing so because I want to (obviously). If I didn't want to write this comment I wouldn't. If someone had a gun to my head saying they would shoot me if I didn't leave the comment, I would choose to write it, but I am not doing that against my "will", the person has simply capitalized on my desire to continue living to make me act in a way I wouldn't otherwise.
My desire to continue living is now tied to leaving this comment, therefore I actually am really stoked about leaving it. If there were not a gun to my head I wouldn't do it because I wouldn't want to, but in this situation I totally do.
Now, my (basic) desire to live is something that's fundamental to my biology / psychology which was determined at my birth. There are of course other things like depression that could make life more unbearable than I can imagine (imagination being a skill I have developed through play and stuff) which might make me decide not to leave this comment after all.
Anyway, back to my original question - which is, do you think that you could ever possibly choose anything that you did not want to choose? And then, are you in control of your own desires? Can you arbitrarily decide to want something different from what you already want without undergoing an intense psychological routine? And don't forget, wanting to prove me wrong could make you choose something you wouldn't otherwise choose!
PS: Please send help
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u/sumguy720 Oct 01 '19
I also should address your specific question (since this guy with the gun will not give it a rest).
If you have based your adherence to social norms and law on the idea that you are arbitrarily in control of every action that you take then you will definitely act worse if someone tells you that your philosophy is incorrect (provided you believe them). You may also act worse to serve your ego and under the assumption that it will prove them wrong. Whether you choose to act worse is not an artifact of your arbitrary exertion of will but on all the billions of formational experiences you have had in your life leading you to desire that course of action.
Any judgement you make is based on your ability to judge which is based on your experience with judging things. Any quality you appreciate is based on qualities you've experienced in the past that you've enjoyed or experiences of those qualities that have been relayed to you by others whose opinions you have grown to trust, whose trust was earned through your experiences of them being reliable in the past. You don't choose to trust them, you MUST trust them because that is how you have learned to trust based on your experience trusting people, which is based on your ability to understand and evaluate causality which may even be limited depending on how omniscient you are.
If your ability to evaluate causality is wrong then you may trust the wrong people because you can't relate outcomes to events, and you might have a wrong idea about experiences they have told you about which may lead you to making decisions that ultimately result in you being unhappy, which is not your fault, really.
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u/Ayjayz Oct 01 '19
No. There's no choice. If being told makes you act worse, then you didn't really choose to act worse - it's a result of you being told to, something out of your own control.
Your decisions always end up based on things outside your control, which means that ultimately nothing is in your control.
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u/Sean_O_Neagan Sep 30 '19
No, that's programming, in a determinist's logic. Our apparent choice about whether or not to spread the determinist word is also programming, apparently. It's not clear to a determinist that anything is anything other than as it should be. In this they're like a certain kind of theologian, interestingly.
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u/Devinology Oct 01 '19 edited Oct 01 '19
We believe in free will even though we know everything is determined. This is because we can't shake the intuition that things could go multiple ways. This intuition is true. Things can, and in fact do, go multiple ways, always. We're always just one of many possible worlds, and they're all real. This is why things are both determined and also not.
A simple example to illustrate: Let's say I only have 2 different colours of shirts in my house. I could have worn the blue one, but I wore the red one today. This is true, but in another sense it isn't: the me contemplating this now was determined to wear the red one. There had to be at least one possible world in which I wore the red one, and the me that wore the red one was determined to do so. Meanwhile another me wore the blue one and was also determined to do so because at least one of me had to fulfill that possibility. Prior to the "choice" it was sort of indeterminate because it wasn't clear which me would wear the red one and which the blue. In fact, there was only one me then, until the "choice" created two off-shooting worlds. Thus it was a choice, but a choice that just splits into two determined worlds. Of course this example simples it - there are an infinite many worlds being populated constantly. There are choices in a sense, but ultimately whatever happens was determined because every possibility must happen as it did. This is why things appear indeterminate prior to happening, but always appear determined in hindsight.
This means we're always responsible, but also not. If I kill someone, I'm the one who chose that, yet after its done, I had no choice because one of me had to fill that possibility and I was the one who happened to fill that role. If it wasn't me, it would have been a different me, but from my perspective it doesn't matter which one was which.
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u/DeathZamboniExpress Oct 01 '19
This belief is self contradictory. You can’t believe in determinism and parallel universes.
Determinism is predicated on the belief that all actions you perform are chosen based on a combination of past experiences and biological instincts. Therefore, there is only one option you would ever chose, say the red shirt, for reasons to innumerable to count. For there to be a different outcome, there would HAVE to be a difference in past events. And for that difference to have occurred, there would have to be a difference before that, etc etc. Events occurring in different ways cannot occur on their own, unless you believe in a soul, or some kind of “second thing” that can influence our world.
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u/Devinology Oct 01 '19
Nah, that's just what we're led to believe. There are actually many instances that could go either way. Quantum physics suggests this. Uncertainty is built into the fabric of reality. My explanation shows why it also seems, and essentially is, also determined though.
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u/Valmar33 Oct 01 '19
This belief is self contradictory. You can’t believe in determinism and parallel universes.
I see no contradiction ~ there could theoretically be a separate universe for each decision.
Therefore, every choice can be possible, and be deterministic.
We cannot really ever know what we will choose, not until after we do.
Because no-one can tell you your future.
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u/UristMcDonald Oct 01 '19
That's pseudoscience. Human's are not special, this is not how the alternate reality theory works, as it is actually saying that superposition is resolved by the creation of two realities.
Also, there is another theory that all points in time are equally real, which IMO seems pretty obvious given the fact human's don't have free will.
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u/Devinology Oct 01 '19
I'm not suggesting that humans have a special power. I'm saying that all possibilities exist, many of which will involve human activity.
That said, we really don't have any proof that humans can't make meaningful choices. I tend to believe that we don't, but it's nowhere near established.
All points in time are real, but that has nothing to do with free will or determinism.
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u/thebindingofJJ Sep 30 '19
Free will doesn’t exist, but we still make choices. This headline is insane.
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u/Sean_O_Neagan Sep 30 '19
Pitting Determinism vs. Free Will tends to have that result.
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u/ronnyhugo Sep 30 '19
Free will doesn't exist, but we still imprison dangerous people for the safety of the rest of society. Being morally responsible for ones actions or not, has nothing to do with it.
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u/kysjasenjalkeenkys Oct 01 '19
We make choices though those choices are not independent of past experience and genetics etc.
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u/kindanormle Sep 30 '19
Do we make choices? Another commentator argued that because we have a set of choices and we choose from that set, then we have free will. This ignores the fact that a deterministic Universe only gives us the illusion of a set of choices. In reality, you were always destined to make one choice and so you never actually had a set to begin with. You can think it over, consider different responses to this fact, but in the end if you have no free will then your response in any direction was always the response you were destined to make.
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u/Ayjayz Oct 01 '19
We certainly make choices. This is an observable fact.
We don't control what choices we make (it's instead a function of the predetermined physical universe).
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u/Valmar33 Sep 30 '19
Insane is a nice word.
To me, the whole idea of "free will" is being able to make choices, even if those choices are limited by various circumstances.
If we can choose between multiple options, that's free will. Ultimately choosing one over another, is also free will.
The fact that we can think about different choices, and deliberate on them, demonstrates free will.
Absolute free will has always been an impossibility, because we cannot simply decide to ignore the limitations of our body.
Dreams a bit more fun ~ assuming you can remember them, or become lucid ~ because they're not physical. They can be whatever you can think about.
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u/randomaccount178 Sep 30 '19 edited Sep 30 '19
If you know anything about programming, think of it like a function. A function accepts inputs, runs it through a processes and returns an output. It does not have a choice, because it is a program, but just because it doesn't have a choice doesn't mean it does not have theoretical options. When you run a function it could return a value of, for example, true, false, or Sunday. Just because that program has a set of things it can return doesn't mean it has a choice in what it returns because that choice is always dictated by its function. Now, if you were not a programmer, or the code wasn't open source, most of the time all you would see is the function returning true or false and then being baffled when it occasionally spits out Sunday. You may even think the function is choosing what return value it would spit out, but its not really, the function has no agency over itself, it can not do anything but what it was programmed to.
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u/domesticatedprimate Oct 01 '19
I believe free will exists, but that the ability to exercise it is not innate. Yes, for most people most of the time, their seemingly conscious decisions are actually made before they are conscious of them. However, humans have also practiced various forms of meditation and mindfulness for thousands of years, the purpose of which is to specifically intercept those unconscious decisions and potentially change them consciously, or in other words, to exercise free will.
One could argue that even advanced mindfulness practitioners are just fooling themselves in a more subtle manner, but I bet it you could at least get some interesting insights about consciousness by comparing the behavioral predictability of a control group versus a group of mediators.
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Sep 30 '19
It's a catch 22.
There are two possible worlds: one with free will and one without. The actual world exists as we know it regardless.
In each of these possible worlds there are two perspectives: Belief in Free will and belief in determinism.
In the determinist world, both perspectives are equally bound by determinism. Belief in free will in this world is itself a result of determined events, and is a manifestation of it's functional utility. E.g. if it is determined that belief in free will produces societal stability, then it is functionally useful.
In the world with free will, the determinist is still bound by their belief in determinism. The person who correctly assumes we have free will however is unbound from determinist structures. However in this world, belief in free will does not necessitate that a person is bound by functions of conscience, as the actor is still free to choose. Belief in free will can not have a determined societal effect, and is therefore not functionally useful.
Belief in free will is only functionally useful if it does not exist.
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u/Ayjayz Oct 01 '19
There are two possible worlds: one with free will and one without
How is a world with free will possible? You can't even define free will in a logically consistent way. It would be like saying "there are two possible worlds, one where true things are true, and one where false things are true".
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Oct 01 '19
This thought experiment assumes free will is possible in any way it is commonly defined. I agree with you, but I limited the scope of my response in order to better address what was posited in the post.
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u/Valmar33 Sep 30 '19
Beautifully stated.
I tend towards a world with free will, simply because I cannot understand the logic of a predetermined world, in a world which everyone makes choices every moment of their waking lives.
The idea of the philosophical zombie comes to mind.
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Sep 30 '19
Thank you!
Personally I tend towards determinism because I think the concept of free will is contrary to causality, but thankfully we don't have an solid answer.
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u/Orionito Sep 30 '19
Assuming everything predetermines what is coming up next, theoretically only The Big Bang is the original, willing event and everything else following wouldn't have happened freely without the influence of that explosion. And it might seem misleading to think that each of our decisions is yet another mental Big Bang.
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u/SherpaJones Sep 30 '19
Whether or not it is functionally useful to believe free will exists, it isn't your choice to believe that anyway.
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u/ErwinFurwinPurrwin Oct 01 '19
Determinists don't doubt will in the sense of volition. Just whether or not it's free in the classical sense. Looks like a lot of people here haven't made that distinction.
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u/eqleriq Sep 30 '19
we wouldn't take responsibility for our actions - crime rates would soar and society would fall apart (iai.tv)
No we would not do that, because there's no free will.
My parents do not believe in free will, but they believed in "being nice" and "not harming people" and so taught me (as victims of their own lack of free will) to do that. And since I have no free will, I am bound by that conditioning.
Now, intelligent people can imagine things and create choices. But they'll only ever follow one, and they'll do it via localized cause and effect.
In fact, a lot of crime and societal erosion happens because people are agitated about their lack of free will so they make the decision to lash out, because it sucks that there's no real free will or choice but there IS a birth lottery.
Marxian dialectic laid this all out nicely.
Haggard and Hornsby disagree in that Hornsby argues humans possess free will in a way that other animals do not, in their ability to explain their actions, whereas Haggard insists that humans are no different from sea snails, or the pets that we train.
Huh? Humans create drama to slow down the passage of time, something animals cannot do. To state that "we're no different than other animals" is decontextualized in this summary below, it would be in relation to our processing of free will. Which, gosh, we're obviously different enough that we can't ask any animals besides some exceptional primates
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u/thegoldengoober Sep 30 '19
Honestly the argument in the OP just sounds like the "people can't have morals without religion" one.
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u/springlake Sep 30 '19
The ancient Greek didn't believe in free will.
They somehow managed to not only build a society from a handful of villages but also keep that society going for a few thousand years.
Somehow I'm not feeling confident about the writers ability to predict the future.
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u/dust-free2 Sep 30 '19
People being agitated about not having free will, does not allow them to make a choice to lash out. Instead they lash out because the conditions are such that they lash out. Lack of free will is not what they are agitated about, it's the having it worse than someone else by just being born. In fact not all people in the circumstance lash out and some even prosper.
Your argument begins to sound as if the lack of free will is the cause of anger which should occur even in people who are doing well. Most people don't care about free will, it's not something they consider.
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u/GolfSierraMike Sep 30 '19
I always find that arguments the intend to preserve free will while accepting determinism must always modify the definition of free will beyond what some might consider the intuitive definition of free will.
In that I freely choose what I decide to do, and while external influence may have an effect on that decision, it is not the ultimate overriding causation of what I decide between A and B and C
If we accept that the decision making apparatus of the self, in whatever form, is wholly the construction of outside influneces beyond our control, environment and genetics and social cultural norms, then we in turn have to accept that outside influences are the overriding factor in deciding between choices since there are only outside factors, which pre determine the outcome of any decision we make.
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u/BrakumOne Sep 30 '19
if free will doesn't exist then none of that makes sense because you dont have the will to believe anything, or to or not to commit a crime.
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u/ProTeyn13 Sep 30 '19
I personally think that everybody is nihilist to some extent. But I don't actually think that everything we do is completely relies on ourselves. There's something missing here : society. Due to our congenital instincts, we seek not just our welfare and status, but our offsprings as well. We are actually well aware of the fact that we have only one shot with our lives, maybe that's a fatalist aspect of our existence and cognitive abilities.
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Sep 30 '19
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u/ronnyhugo Sep 30 '19
A chess computer does better the more time and effort it can spend on each decision. If you want to be the type of person determined to be successful in what you do, you're better off spending as much effort as you can on your decisions. Regardless of whether or not we do or don't have free will.
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u/AArgot Sep 30 '19
And those of us who don't think it exists, when we get our hands on advanced AGI and work for despotic governments, will be able to easily socially engineer the population because false beliefs in how the brain works create tremendous vulnerabilities.
I have yet to see another philosopher point this out.
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u/ViralGameover Sep 30 '19
That headline is a little weird. I’m not well versed on the free will debate, but isn’t this idea contradictory?
Free will may not exist. But if we believe it doesn’t exist, we’ll exhibit free will by doing whatever we wanted?