Free Will vs. Determinism

[cornandbeans]

Do humans actually have full control over their actions or is it just a perception?

I'll state my views further along once I have someone to disagree with. >: )

[OMG its HIM]

well, it depends on the situation, if someone is traped under a bus, asking for help, then that is your instincts in which you have no control over.
but something as simple as walking, then its someones own action.

[Xx{Midday}xX]

A perception is another term meaning to understand something using the five senses that humans have. How do you percept human control?

I don't quite understand the question here, but if it's something concerning whether one is bound to fate or not, it's unanswerable.

[Adamaja456]

This is something that i have wondered for quite a while. Do i really make my own choices in everyday life or no matter what i choose, it was meant to happen?

What If i spilled juice on my white shirt 5 minutes before school and i pick a different shirt to wear and then a pretty girl compliments my shirt? Maybe that was supposed to happen.

But on the other side, it scares me that i have no control over anything i do in life. I WANT to believe that i have free will and I make my own choices and thus deal with the unique outcomes. If you think your destiny is already planned, then whats the point of living life?

[FictionJunction]

Determinism - The mind is a product of the brain. Everything is the result of prior actions, and so forth.

Free Will - God is forced (by his very fair and just nature) to give us free will |or| we are simply responsible for our actions.

Either way, I never bother with this discussion as there's no coherent way of proving that free will exists without the use of Deus Ex Machina (watch as my bias seeps through my post, hehe).

Physics stings more than God or the notion of an omniscient entity. Knowing whether free will exists or not doesn't matter because, in the end, we feel like we're choosing and are in control. I dismiss the notion as false because I dislike the idea, but even if it were true, it wouldn't make a difference.

hey!

[infinity.]

well, it depends on the situation, if someone is traped under a bus, asking for help, then that is your instincts in which you have no control over.
but something as simple as walking, then its someones own action.

I'm pretty sure if someone was trapped under a bus, that i would be fully capable of not going over to help.

I feel like our actions aren't pre-determined, but there is always reasoning behind what we do. That a person wouldn't just randomly shoot a deer for no reason, that there was an emotion that triggered the action.

but im sure most of us think the same way.

[devonin]

It appears to me that I have free will. Either I have free will, or I have a predetermined existence which is disguised by such an accurate illusion of free will that I cannot distinguish it from reality.

As such, which one is true is entirely meaningless to my existence, because either way, I appear to have free will.

[Reach]

It appears to me that I have free will. Either I have free will, or I have a predetermined existence which is disguised by such an accurate illusion of free will that I cannot distinguish it from reality.

As such, which one is true is entirely meaningless to my existence, because either way, I appear to have free will.

If I knew that I did in fact not have free will, I think it would completely change my outlook on life. I don't think it's entirely meaningless at all.

I don't think it's a true dichotomy; I believe the answer is somewhere in between, where our choices are in fact heavily bound and limited by our biology and the universe, but there are independent choices our brains are capable of making on some level.

Regardless, even if the universe and everything in it is entirely deterministic in that no free choices can be made, I would say the future is indeterminate because of how the quantum world behaves. God does roll dice, and I don't think anything is meant to be, but rather everything that happens is determined by fixed but chance reactions combined with the input of some free will.

[devonin]

If I knew that I did in fact not have free will, I think it would completely change my outlook on life.My point is that each and every thing we could possibly point to as evidence suggests that we have free will. I'm not sure how someone could prove determinism at all.

Even a foolproof prediction of a future event wouldn't necessarily prove a -lack- of free will, though it would raise some very interesting metaphysical questions.

That said, one of my favourite things to do is to argue that the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics actually requires determinism rather than being a way for free will to work.

[poulice]

Well whether or not all of our events are predetermined, I don't think that means we have to be fatalist (fatalist being the people who believe that because they're not in control, nothing maters). If determinism is in fact the way the universe works, than that doesn't stop us from HAVING to do certain things to make our fate come true.

For example: someone wants a raise.

Fatalism ideology: I don't need to work any harder because if I'm supposed to get a raise, I'll get it. If I don't get it, than I was never supposed to get it.

Libertarianism (someone who believes in free will but not determinism) ideology: If I want to get that raise, I'm going to have to work harder so that someone else does not get it.

compatibilist (someone who believes in determinism and free will) ideology: If I need a raise than I need to work harder. If I get it, than I was supposed to get it, but if i wouldn't have worked hard I would not have gotten it and my fate would have being to not get a raise.

Now that I have stated which of the main three ideologies that you can choose from, I will give my personal opinion on which one I believe in and why.

I am a libertarian. I do not think that my "fate" is already predetermined. The idea that something is supposed to happen but NO ONE knows what it is supposed to be is completely useless to think. It does not change anything. Everyday, people make over thousands of choices, if all of those where the reagents to something even partially "fate related" than there would also be no proof. Fate is nothing more than a concept that people believe because it can't be disproved.

That is just the way I see it. The main thing thought, having no free will and thinking your fate is to be great will not happened unless you work or do something.

[devonin]

But if determinism is true, fatalists are fated to be fatalists, so we shouldn't harp on them for it, except that if we do, we were fated to harp on them for it, so we shoudln't hold ourselves responsible...see, this is why people who are determinists tend to not want to attach too much significance to the value of choice.

[Tracelight24]

This is very interesting and kind of reminds me of future predictions. Its like, if you see a vision of something happening in the future, it wouldn't make a difference if you tried to change it. In fact the reason the thing happened was probably because you tried to change it.

Lets say you predict you will lose 100 dollars by losing your wallet, or getting it stolen. No matter what you do, if the vision is true, somehow, you will end up getting it stolen. So, if determinism was true, being a fatalist would make sense, but we can't tell whether "fate" is true, because like devonin said, you would be fooled that you have free will as an illusion.

[Croenix]

To me, determinism just seems like an easy way out of taking responsibility for one's own actions. You could theoretically answer "Fate made me do that" or "Fate made it so" to every question.

[vvav]

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about advanced physics, so I wouldn't claim (as I believe I did about a year ago when we had this exact same discussion) that the universe is necessarily deterministic, but I believe that the brain is governed by the same physical laws as the rest of the universe, and that believing that we have some sort of "ability to choose" that sets us apart from everything else is simply arrogance.

From my understanding of physics, most basic laws of motion and such are pretty much deterministic, but there's plenty of weird crap such as quantum physics that screws with trying to prove the universe as a whole is deterministic, but I simply don't see how you can have the exact same universe potentially play out in multiple ways. If in one universe a planet is, over a finite period of time, moved a finite distance away from the "same" planet in another universe as time passes, assuming the universes were superimposed on each other perfectly but without being able to affect each other, then energy was somehow moved from one place to another with no cause.

[darkness1477]

while we have free will their are certain outcomes for your choices that society has dictaded/ if you have a job and work really hard you can get a raise because society has dictaded that hard work is worth rewarding. if u rob a bank and get caught u will go to jail because society has dictaded that people should be punished for messing with other peoples money. r kelly will never go to jail because people think that as long as he keeps making good music he should be able to continue without inturuption

[UserNameGoesHere]

Would it make sense if I said both?

Everything in the world which is well-known appears to be deterministic does it not? The only things for which there is uncertainty as to if it is deterministic or not would be on the cutting edge of science.

Now, I'm no theoretical physicist but it seems to me the most logical conclusion is a system of determinism. The reasoning is essentially application of Occam's razor. Since everything that we have thorough knowledge on appears entirely deterministic and since the only things which don't are things which we don't have such thorough knowledge of, wouldn't it make the most sense if the system was deterministic?

So I say the burden of proof would be on one who claims the system isn't deterministic and such proof would be as simple as providing exactly one example of a phenomena which we have thorough knowledge of for which no further research can benefit and which is provably non-deterministic. In the absense of such proof I will have to default to determinism.

Now, the question arises as to how can one have free will if everything is deterministic? Good question. I'll try to explain. In essense though it has to do with point of view and knowledge.

Let us apply two points of view: One will be that of an outside entity. The other will be that of a human.

In the point of view of the entity which is outside of this system, cause and effect within the system is glaringly evident. Why, this entity could simply use his/her/its own equivalent of a super-powerful computer in whatever context it exists outside of this system to calculate exactly everything that will happen inside the system, at any point in time, given the initial conditions and the initial forces at work or can calculate for any later time given any conditions and the exact forces at work at that exact time. If the entity has an unlimited memory and computation ability, all of this could be done in his/her/its head. Conclusion: The system is deterministic.

In the point of view of the human, everything he/she does is his/her own decision. If things were done differently, different outcomes would happen. Yes, if things were done differently, which, as all things are already set in motion, they will continue on their relative paths, so to speak. Believing in free will, a person acts on that free will to affect whatever may be affected in life. Since the person does not have the information on the entirety of the state of the universe and all paticles/forces/etc for any point in time, it becomes impossible for that person to predict the future and, hence, it may as well be variable, from the point of view of the human, even if it is deterministic from the point of view of the outside observer.

Now, should the human have this information, it would still take greater calculating ability than is conceivably possible for the human (or even all of humanity) to calculate, from there, exactly what would happen at all future events. This would, in turn, create various paradoxes. In fact, merely having a single snapshot of everything in the universe from any time period itself would likely create various paradoxes.

The thing is, though, that it is impossible for anything within the system to ever gain a snapshot of the entire system because, if any did, it would invariably change the rest of the system, changing the future, and, hence, rendering the snapshot invalid, which would consequently mean that it really wasn't a snapshot of the system to begin with (because it would only then be a snapshot of a near-similar-but-not-exact system). The very process of gaining the information required to calculate things with 100% certainty within the system invalidates the information itself.

From outside of the system, however, snapshots could be made without affecting it (though a snapshot of the system outside of the system would affect that system although an observer outside of the system outside of our system would be unaffected and could observe but could not have a snapshot of his/her/its own system, etc...)

Because this is highly theoretical, it is difficult or impossible for me to prove any of this, which is why I hope it makes sense. In fact, if I'm correct, it is entirely unprovable because I exist inside the system.

I indeed could be wrong as well but I do hope at least some of what I have conjectured made sense.

If there were easy answers, this stuff wouldn't be at the cutting edge of science.

This is the stuff of deep thought.

I hope my contribution helps.

[MrRubix]

I believe in hard determinism. I don't believe anything in our universe is truly random -- any effect has a clear cause, in my mind, even if we don't know what that cause may be in its entirety. I further believe that our thoughts and actions are not exempt, either. Whatever it is that composes our minds are also the result of causal chains, as well as whatever set our thoughts rolling -- setting an endless stream of precursors to our actions which we perceive free will over.

I think we may feel as if we have free will, but if you break it all down, I think anything we say or do can be explained in terms of a cause-effect relationship. Just because we have self-awareness does not make us special or exempt from physics: If a plant sways a bit, we say the wind caused it. If we choose to eat a donut, we say it was due to free will. But there are countless variables pertaining to biological desires/needs and opportunistic markers that actually make the decision for us, really.

It's like physical attraction to the opposite sex. Do you like that hot chick in class because it's out of your own free will? Or is it because you've been hardwired biologically to identify and find such women desirable -- a hardwiring surely shaped by societal functions, but nevertheless something that isn't entirely out of our own will.

I just don't believe that if we don't know something, we can ignore it. It's like how we tend to associate gods with things we don't yet understand, but as seen over time, science and logical explanation tends to replace the "it was due to the gods" explanation. Just because we don't know about all the variables which are involved in a given decision doesn't mean those variables aren't playing a role. I may feel that I am free, but I think there's more evidence to suggest that we're simply a more complex system of cause-effect chains.

[FictionJunction]

I find girl A and girl B attractive. I wouldn't go out with girl A because, despite being attractive, she isn't to my liking. Girl B is where it's at.

if you can prove to me that preferences are biological then I'll consider your theory. And pardon my ignorance in this subject, but I just find it to be pretty awkward for it to be true. I always figured preferences came from experiences more than anything.

Either way, I stray from determinism as a defensive impulse because the mere thought of being a part of a bigger chain of events, playing a literally mindless role just bothers me a lot. Whether or not it's true, though, doesn't mater because we wouldn't know the difference now would we.

[UserNameGoesHere]

I don't know if that was in direct reply to my long post or if it was directed more towards the thread in general but I feel as though I should clarify a few points nonetheless.

I agree entirely with Mr. Rubix on the determinism aspect.

I guess the question comes down to "What is free will?"

I say free will is the acting of your own choosing. As such it doesn't matter to me if there were potential other choices I could have made or if I was destined to make the one choice. In either case, I was acting according to my choosing (even if, cosmically, I was indeed limited to only one choice).

From my point of view I have acted according to my choice. It does not matter if from your point of view you already had the knowledge of what my choice was going to be and knew I was going to make that choice before I ever did.

[FictionJunction]

determinism eliminates free will, why would you even consider defining it as 'acting of your own choosing' when there's no choice to begin with. You can't follow determinism and believe you have free will. You're just really confused.

[UserNameGoesHere]

Define 'choice' then, independent of the concept of free will. In other words, define choice but do not use 'free will' anywhere in the definition.

[FictionJunction]

there's no such thing as choice if free will isn't there. Choice would be an illusion of free will and nothing more if considered from a deterministic point of view.

I can't define choice without free will as both concepts are entwined.

[UserNameGoesHere]

Interesting. Suppose I have three cards, a Jack, a Queen, and a King.

You are to choose one of them.

Now, it doesn't matter which one you choose as two will remain, and each of the ones that remains, while not chosen, was still a choice, correct? So even if you declined to play the game entirely (hence not freely choosing any of them), they would still all three be choices, and this is independent of your free will choosing one or more than one or none of them at all or any other combination, I think.

If it can follow that a choice is independent of the chooser, it should follow that one can have free will independent of determinism.

Or I may just be very confused.

[Reach]

I find girl A and girl B attractive. I wouldn't go out with girl A because, despite being attractive, she isn't to my liking. Girl B is where it's at.

if you can prove to me that preferences are biological then I'll consider your theory. And pardon my ignorance in this subject, but I just find it to be pretty awkward for it to be true. I always figured preferences came from experiences more than anything.

Either way, I stray from determinism as a defensive impulse because the mere thought of being a part of a bigger chain of events, playing a literally mindless role just bothers me a lot. Whether or not it's true, though, doesn't mater because we wouldn't know the difference now would we.

It's not that it's entirely a biological preference, but his point was that at some level, biological preference is a variable influencing your decision. Also, preferences come from your biology and experience. You are hardwired with many, many preferences, and this serves as a template for how experience will mold and potentially change some of these preferences. Others will always remain unchanged. This is not really debated at all in the literature.

For example, humans are predisposed to like sweet tastes and dislike bitter ones (if this isn't obvious to you, look again, specifically at the size of society lately D: ). These trait preferences are linked back to specific trait locus on our chromosomes. However, as you can probably tell from experience, the degree of liking for certain sweets is not the same in everyone, and this is highly influenced by experience.



As I see it, the free will debate can be simplified down to something like this:

Let's say I ask you to consciously, out of your own free will, snap your fingers when you're good and ready...whenever you choose to do so. Does the command to snap your fingers proceed before or after the conscious perception of snapping your fingers?

The dichotomy is essentially either (simplistic version):

1) Input information -> motor information runs into the thalamus -> redirection of the information to the frontal lobes and conscious processing of the command -> choice to redirect the information to motor cortex and then back into the spine, which is then followed by a finger snap.

2) Input information -> motor information runs into the thalamus -> redirection of the information to the motor cortex and associated movement areas, command to snap fingers is processed unconsciously -> information is redirected to the frontal lobes and the conscious perception of the command is formed -> information redirected back into the spine, followed by the finger snap.

Now you see, #2 is more along the lines of what actually happens. This is a problem, because it means the perception of choice actually follows the command to perform the action, which seems to imply that choice is only an illusion. You can't infer directly though that we have no choice at all, that at some level we didn't have an influence on the information, but it doesn't appear to be that way.

[MrRubix]

"I find girl A and girl B attractive. I wouldn't go out with girl A because, despite being attractive, she isn't to my liking. Girl B is where it's at.
if you can prove to me that preferences are biological then I'll consider your theory. And pardon my ignorance in this subject, but I just find it to be pretty awkward for it to be true. I always figured preferences came from experiences more than anything."

The mere fact you are even attracted to girls in the first place is indicative that there is something influencing your decisions that you may not know about, considering how many people share your preference.

If attraction to the opposite sex was entirely based on free choice, we'd have a lot more people who simply "don't have any inclination to pursue the opposite sex at all," if you understand what I mean. It'd be like me saying "all humans have a biological inclination for Brussels sprouts" -- when you see those sprouts, you instantly have this natural urge to be with it/touch it/stroke it/whatever. But that is not the case -- we're hardwired to pursue *people*. When we see someone really hot, something in our brains is drawing us to that. Even though you may "think" you are preferring one girl over another, my point is that your attraction to the opposite sex is something likely hard-coded in the first place.

I did not explain myself very well here, but I am saying that there are all sorts of "hardwired" preferences. Even though these preferences are shaped empirically as well as through other factors/preferences in your brain, they all start there.

Saying we are entirely free from determinism is a huge fallacy because there are just too many things that are pre-wired. If we were truly free-thinking agents, we'd be born totally free from all biological mental encodings. The fact that we are not free from those is one example of why so many of our decisions are merely part of causal chains.



"For example, humans are predisposed to like sweet tastes and dislike bitter ones (if this isn't obvious to you, look again, specifically at the size of society lately D: ). These trait preferences are linked back to specific trait locus on our chromosomes. However, as you can probably tell from experience, the degree of liking for certain sweets is not the same in everyone, and this is highly influenced by experience."

Yes, this is a good example of what I mean.


"2) Input information -> motor information runs into the thalamus -> redirection of the information to the motor cortex and associated movement areas, command to snap fingers is processed unconsciously -> information is redirected to the frontal lobes and the conscious perception of the command is formed -> information redirected back into the spine, followed by the finger snap."

This is also correct. Another way I would explain this is that if I were told to snap my fingers, I would imagine the process would be determined as such (I am going to explain the conscious and subconscious decisions in the same vein here):

I am sitting there, basically chilling. I know that I have been told to snap my fingers (purely input so that we interpret our order). So, I now have time (now) until (whenever my preferences have indicated that I'm waiting too long and being ridiculous in accordance with empirical evidence and preferences for how people get irritated with too long of a wait, i.e. waiting ten hours would be unreasonable. Same with 8, 6, 4... eventually we reach some idea of an upper extreme) to snap my fingers. However, the time in which I choose to snap, I would argue, is not up to us (the subconscious command to snap fingers). I would say that even the time we choose to snap is determined. Maybe we're hungry and anxious. Maybe I am feeling apathetic/lazy/slow/lethargic/tired from my day/nothing else to do that has satisfied my preferences, and so there is some weight placed on snapping later. I could go on and on, but there are millions of variables like these that push and pull to help determine exactly "when I snap my fingers" -- the earliest end being if I wanted to snap as soon as I heard a command, and the furthest end being if I were told to wait as long as I could stand without snapping. A combination of subconscious physical factors and environmental factors (we were told to simply choose a time to snap without any mentioning of preferred timeframe, meaning it is up to us to make that judgment call, and that call is shaped by our past experiences). At the end of it all, all these variables are essentially pointing to a moment in time where we think "Ok, now is a good time to snap" and we then execute the physical command. We think we chose when to snap, but really that time point was determined by a push-pull relationship of an absurd number of variables beyond our conscious comprehension.

Again, a really bad explanation on my part, but I hope it makes some sense. You could imagine that the real thing is just like my example explanation, only infinitely more detailed with a better outlining of how variables relate to one another and how much they push/pull. Our decision to snap, to me, seems to be no more exempt from physics than that of an apple falling off a tree.

[Tokzic]

lmfao this reminds me of the topic where i came to the conclusion of determinism on my own before even realizing it had been thought up already

Free will is entirely a lie. It's an uncomfortable truth, yes, but it is truth. Everything acts under the laws of reality as we know it, and even as we are sentinent matter, we are still matter nonetheless. When we are presented with a decision, there is no other possible result than the outcome because the outcome is a direct result of your brain's state. Sure, you consciously consider each possible choice, but even our conscious thought is hard-wired. Anything that is situational is simply the result of the hard-wiring progressing through time, and not even worth considering because the way our situation influences our decision is a direct result of our hard-wiring.

It's both comforting and mildly disturbing that there's only one possible fate of the universe.