Does Free Will Exist?

UnReAL13 said:

I feel like the denial of free will is just a ridiculous excuse to not take moral responsibility for one's actions.

"Oh no officer, you clearly don't understand. I didn't decide to brutally rape and kill that woman. My BRAIN made me do it. I was held hostage by my own deterministic impulses!!!"

It doesn't get much more absurd than notions like these.

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Cases like this can easily be covered by compatibilism. ("Of course your brain made you do it! That is why we need to lock up you along with that dangerous brain of yours.") Regardless of whether you think that compatibilism is a little light, or whether you think that is not real free will or whatever.

But that is not the same as libertarian free will, i.e. the notion of free will that is generally under discussion, that is generally denied, and that can easily be dispelled as a phantom, as contradictory, as you-name-it.

UnReAL13 said:

I feel like the denial of free will is just a ridiculous excuse to not take moral responsibility for one's actions.

"Oh no officer, you clearly don't understand. I didn't decide to brutally rape and kill that woman. My BRAIN made me do it. I was held hostage by my own deterministic impulses!!!"

It doesn't get much more absurd than notions like these.

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No, the denial of free will is just the most logical conclusion, in my eyes. It doesn't justify evil actions.

An evil man is made to be that way, either through his genetics, or through his experiences. But what does it matter why he is evil? He is what he is.

I could just as easily say that the invention of free will is an excuse not to evangelize. After all, if it's man's choice whether they'll believe in God or not, how can we ever change their minds? Whereas if God is in charge, we plant the seeds and hope for them to grow.

Of course, I do not think this of everyone who believes in free will. The two sides aren't really very different. We both rely and trust in God to take care of us. We both believe that evangelism is an essential activity that all churches and all believers are called to do.

The free will vs predestination debate should be for nothing more than healthy discussion.

Exiledoomsayer said:

Thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts on the matter.

I will not argue against your experiences as they are yours personally and I believe you let me in on them to understand you better(Which it did indeed do.) and not so that I could try to discredit them.

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Yes, this has been a very fun discussion.

See, I wouldn't have shared my reasons with certain others... *cough* 3sigma *cough*. But I can tell you're actually listening to me, not just trying to prove why I'm wrong for believing the way I do. I enjoy talking to you.

jonmichael818 said:

It may not be one or the other that causes you to make the choice, it may be a combination of the two. If your genetic dispostion is overcome by environmental factors, than it was those environmental factors that caused the choice. If your genetic disposition overcame your environmental factors, then it was your genetics that caused you to make the choice.

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Who decides whether the genetic disposition or the environmental factors win out? In any choice one begins with two or more open possibilities. There are two or more roads ahead to the future. After one makes the choice, one is on one road and the past cannot be revised. To say that "if your genetic disposition overcame environmental factors, then it was your genetics that caused you to make the choice" accomplishes nothing more than saying "if your genetic disposition overcame environmental factors, then your disposition overcame environmental factors". It's a tautology, but it doesn't establish an answer to the question of why my genetic disposition overcame environmental factors.

Ok, lets say you make a choice.
Why did you make that choice?
You made that choice for a reason, correct?
That reason is the determining factor for that choice. That reason(s) is an accumulation of prior choices, which had prior reasons etc. Its all causality, just dominos.

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When I make a choice, the reason I made that choice is that the entity which is myself chooses. There is no other reason. Said reason is not an accumulation of prior choices. Supposing that I had eaten a chocolate bar every day of my life until today, that does not guarantee that I will eat a chocolate bar today. I still have the free will to eat it or not eat it as I choose. I can choose to act against genetic dispositions. I can choose to act against environmental pressures. I can choose to act against both simultaneously. The only reason that's necessary or sufficient to cause my choices is me.

I think the issue here is that you are assuming that people do things "just 'cause." Why did the person whistle while they walk? Why did the person sing in the shower? Why did the person toss their head?
I can think of a ton of different reasons why anybody would do any one of these things. There were thoughts going through their heads at the moment they decided to do these things. Those thoughts are the causes. Unless a person did these things involuntarily, which would mean either someone else controlled the action for them, they had some kind of muscle spasm(in which case there could be some kind of physiological explaination) or it happed out of true randomness. If it was truly random, then they were not in control of the action either, it would have been an external agent that caused the randomness.

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Well, by definition an external agent cannot cause true randomness. But in the cases under discussion, the more important fact is that human experience is like nothing you describe. Examples like whistling or kicking one's heels do not require thoughts going through your head to occur. Sometimes you just find yourself doing them and you're not even sure how long you've been doing them. Nonetheless you have the ability to start and stop at any time.

jonmichael818 said:

Here is what you said:

Yes, I agree your mental faculties have a significant impact on what happens. But I have issues regarding the general understanding of the idea that "you control your future." I agree that "you" control your future, but the "you" that is in question is the sum total of all previous causes and effects. It is that sum total(i.e. you) that is controlling(i.e. determining) your future. Free will is not involved.

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Yes it is. Compatibilist free will. Is that so hard to understand?

jonmichael818 said:

Where does the randomness come from then?

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Now that is a truly odd question.

jonmichael818 said:

If you say from free will,

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Me? Saying that? Are you sure you are following all those posts?

Please, do yourself a favor and re-read post #11:
http://www.christianforums.com/t7524477-2/#post56465486

jonmichael818 said:

is that not circular reasoning? The only randomness that I know of is:radioactive decay, quantum fluctuations. These two examples of randomness are external agents. Even if they were not considered external agents, you still do not have control over them because they are completely random, and eliminates the possibility of free will.

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jonmichael818 said:

Consider this short clip:

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These experiments are laughable. They don't consider the time delay for a neural impulse to travel from the brain to the finger. It's also very subjective as to when the person actually "knew" when they were going to make the decision, as opposed to the moment when they had declared such knowledge.

UnReAL13 said:

These experiments are laughable. They don't consider the time delay for a neural impulse to travel from the brain to the finger. It's also very subjective as to when the person actually "knew" when they were going to make the decision, as opposed to the moment when they had declared such knowledge.

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Well, I doubt it took six seconds for the signal to press the button to make it from the brain to the finger. Also, there was enough time for the experimenter to make the guess six seconds before. I think it would take longer for the machine to sense his patterns, display them on the screen, and then for the experimenter to make his decision.

Did the subject wait six seconds every time before hitting the button? No. He hit it as soon as his conscious decision was made.

GrayAngel said:

Well, I doubt it took six seconds for the signal to press the button to make it from the brain to the finger. Also, there was enough time for the experimenter to make the guess six seconds before. I think it would take longer for the machine to sense his patterns, display them on the screen, and then for the experimenter to make his decision.

Did the subject wait six seconds every time before hitting the button? No. He hit it as soon as his conscious decision was made.

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How do you know what signals are responsible for which brain activities? They seem to be relying on the assumption that "there was neural activity beforehand, therefore the sub-conscious made the decision". There is ALWAYS some sort of neural activity for various motor functions in the body. What indicates that this neural activity specifically coincides with his finger movement? Perhaps there was a twitch in his leg 6 seconds before he pressed the button.

UnReAL13 said:

How do you know what signals are responsible for which brain activities? They seem to be relying on the assumption that "there was neural activity beforehand, therefore the sub-conscious made the decision". There is ALWAYS some sort of neural activity for various motor functions in the body. What indicates that this neural activity specifically coincides with his finger movement? Perhaps there was a twitch in his leg 6 seconds before he pressed the button.

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In that case, how was the experimenter able to predict with 100% accuracy what the subject was going to do? If it was just a twitch in his leg, that wouldn't have helped him any.

jonmichael818 said:

So, are you just saying that there are different ideas of free will? Some exist and others don't?(i.e. compatibilist free will,and the type of free will that I am describing) It seems to me that we either have free will or we don't?

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Of course there are different ideas, that is pretty much undeniable. And it bears to differentiate between them, lest you fall for equivocation or bait and switch routines.

jonmichael818 said:

It is indeed, but my point is that the random is not a phenomenon that stems from the brain. Or a least as far as we know thus far. I could be dead wrong.
Actually Roger Penrose has a theory that suggests that human consciousness is somehow involved with quantum processes. Though from what I read he is in a small minority. We shall see.

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And even if there those quantum processes, the probabilities involved would be small enough to neglect them. Suppose for instance that with some randomness tossed into our decision making processes, you would in fact end up with actual alternate futures. Then those probabilities would be small, maybe 99.9999% vs 0.0001% if I may pull some numbers from a hat.

It would be a really tough sell, to say "You really had free will to make this post or not. There was a chance of about 0.0001% that you would have not made it."


And then of course there is a problem that is inherent to causeless and hence random events. Namely, it is just arbitrary. There is literally no reason for why x and not ~x happens, which makes it impossible to point to anything as responsible for x and ~x.


A rock and a hard place. Determinism, and arbitraryness.

jonmichael818 said:

Sorry, I suppose what I meant was "IF you were to say." But of course as you rightly point out, you would not.

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Ah, a counterfactual. But you were right of course that this would be a tautology.

jonmichael818 said:

Who decides, no one. The outcome is based on whether the genetics or environment was the stronger.

If you ate a chocolate bar every day of your life and then decide not eat it one day, it would be because there is a reason. You can choose to act against your gentics, but that would mean your environment caused you to overcome your genetics. You can choosed to act against your environment, but that would mean your genetics overcame your environment.

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I think we're at an impass caused by differences in philosophy. You assume that everything in my consciousness, in other words everything that constitutes myself, is determined by genetics and environment. I on the other hand do not believe this to be the case. For starters, I've already mentioned my ability to make different choices in the same circumstances. My genes are the same from the moment my mom's egg met by dad's sperm up to my death. My environment doesn't vary all that much. In the life of an ordinary math teacher, one school day is more or less like the next. Yet my choices on a given day are often vastly different. Moreoever, I can experience the fact that different choices don't arise from different, prior mental states. I always wake up in the morning feeling the same way: groggy, tired, and a little bit achy. Yet even so, I can make vastly different decisions right off the bat.

How do you choose to act against both simultaneously?

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To answer that rigorously, we'd first have to know exactly what genetic and environmental factors influence my thinking. And that would be difficult. Because, believe it or not, scientists have not yet found any gene that has any effect on human thinking. There have been a lot of large, thorough scientific studies trying to locate such genes, but in all cases there are no results consistent enough to be sure of the fact. Similarly there are attempts to explain human thinking based on chemical influences such as serotonin, adrenaline, epronepron, and so forth. However in recent years those theories have been put on shaky ground by scientific studies.

However, I can say this much, that in some cases where I feel the (alleged) adrenaline rush and desire to run around or jump or doing something else physical, I'm still able to stand still. In cases when my (alleged) low serotonin levels make me want to lie down and mope for a while, I'm still able to get up and run and jump. And so forth.

While, it is true that you can overcome your genetics as a result of your environment; and it is true you can act differently then your past decisions that may have been the result of your past environment. You still acted as a result of your current(up to the moment) environment(i.e. thoughts leading up to the moment). There was a sequence of thoughts that took place that lead to the decision. All cause and effect.

As for the experiment in the video, it's worth noting that Dr. Benjamin Libert of UCSF, the first neurologist to perform that experiment, specifically said that the results did not rule out free will.

GrayAngel said:

If God is the one in charge, unless He just put a blindfold over His eyes and let things happen on their own, He is the one responsible.

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Who says? Since when do you make the rules?

AlexBP said:

I think we're at an impass caused by differences in philosophy. You assume that everything in my consciousness, in other words everything that constitutes myself, is determined by genetics and environment. I on the other hand do not believe this to be the case. For starters, I've already mentioned my ability to make different choices in the same circumstances. My genes are the same from the moment my mom's egg met by dad's sperm up to my death. My environment doesn't vary all that much. In the life of an ordinary math teacher, one school day is more or less like the next. Yet my choices on a given day are often vastly different. Moreoever, I can experience the fact that different choices don't arise from different, prior mental states. I always wake up in the morning feeling the same way: groggy, tired, and a little bit achy. Yet even so, I can make vastly different decisions right off the bat.

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I think the difference in why you believe this is that you're unaware of the actual conditions that shape your decisions. You seem to be under the assumption that mere genetics or relatively stable environment are all that shapes your decisions. First off, from one moment to the next your brain has electrically changed, and then there's millions of other variables in our bodies that we're unaware of that are constantly changing such as hormones, sugar level, blood pressure, temperature, stress, rest, position, hunger, thirst, oxygen levels, etc. Second, there's an 'innumerable' amount of variables in our environment from day to day. You seem to think that just because you're 'equally' rested, in the same place, faced with the same decision, that all variables are the same and have been accounted for. They haven't.

AlexBP said:

To answer that rigorously, we'd first have to know exactly what genetic and environmental factors influence my thinking. And that would be difficult. Because, believe it or not, scientists have not yet found any gene that has any effect on human thinking. There have been a lot of large, thorough scientific studies trying to locate such genes, but in all cases there are no results consistent enough to be sure of the fact. Similarly there are attempts to explain human thinking based on chemical influences such as serotonin, adrenaline, epronepron, and so forth. However in recent years those theories have been put on shaky ground by scientific studies.

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Much the same way we don't have to know that there's many variables involved in making a die roll differently every time, such as air pressure, temperature, surface smoothness, angle of descent, shape of the hand, air currents, gravity, etc, we don't have to know all the variables in the mind to know that they exist and they influence every single one of our decisions.

AlexBP said:

However, I can say this much, that in some cases where I feel the (alleged) adrenaline rush and desire to run around or jump or doing something else physical, I'm still able to stand still. In cases when my (alleged) low serotonin levels make me want to lie down and mope for a while, I'm still able to get up and run and jump. And so forth.

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Chemicals in your body are only part of the variables in making those decisions. Sometimes, even when I'm dead tired, I stay up working because I know I have to because I worry about my job.

AlexBP said:

While, it is true that you can overcome your genetics as a result of your environment; and it is true you can act differently then your past decisions that may have been the result of your past environment. You still acted as a result of your current(up to the moment) environment(i.e. thoughts leading up to the moment). There was a sequence of thoughts that took place that lead to the decision. All cause and effect.

As for the experiment in the video, it's worth noting that Dr. Benjamin Libert of UCSF, the first neurologist to perform that experiment, specifically said that the results did not rule out free will.

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Free will, as in decisions based on absolutely no past events, is not possible unless we believe that somehow our decisions are unattached to reality and the universe, as a whole. In a way, our decisions are inevitable given the specific state of the universe at the time of said decision.

Rex Lex said:

Who says? Since when do you make the rules?

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Are you saying that God isn't responsible for what he created, set in motion, and knew where it would it go?