Is free will real?

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

jayem said:
My naturalistic view

From a naturalist view, everything is either determined by the laws of physics or (possibly) totally random.

Randomness, if it occurs, is indeed "uncaused," and hence "free" in the OP's sense, but it isn't really the kind of "freedom" one can feel good about.

There are many different kinds of "free will" (e.g. compatibilist free will, PAP free will), but the OP's version seems to me completely pointless.

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
There are brain cells in the heart...

Actually, there are not.

There are neurons in the heart. They control the contractions of the heart muscle. They are not "brain cells."

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

Bob Carabbio said:
Absolutely. If God doesn't DRAW YOU to Christ, you're NOT COMING. "Conviction of SIN" isn't something you can generate within yourself.

This, however isn't a support of the "L", and "I" of Calvinism, OR their Theology of "T".

I don't think you entirely understand the TULIP, because your first paragraph is in fact a beautifully elegant summary of what the T means. The "official" wording for the T is "There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God, and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil."

The I is the flip side of what you said: If God DOES draw you to Christ, then you ARE coming.

Bob Carabbio · Dec 8, 2019

Radagast said:
I don't think you entirely understand the TULIP, because your first paragraph is in fact a beautifully elegant summary of what the T means. The "official" wording for the T is "There remain, however, in man since the fall, the glimmerings of natural light, whereby he retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the differences between good and evil, and discovers some regard for virtue, good order in society, and for maintaining an orderly external deportment. But so far is this light of nature from being sufficient to bring him to a saving knowledge of God, and to true conversion, that he is incapable of using it aright even in things natural and civil."

The I is the flip side of what you said: If God DOES draw you to Christ, then you ARE coming.

SO - obviously I understand "T" perfectly. You didn't mention the imaginary "Regeneration" that the Calvinist invents as a "transitory stage before salvation", and there's no reason Biblically to assume that "I" has any reality in truth.

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

Bob Carabbio said:
SO - obviously I understand "T" perfectly.

Yes, and you even believe the T. You just don't realise that the T is what you believe.

Bob Carabbio said:
and there's no reason Biblically to assume that "I" has any reality in truth.

So, just to be clear, you're denying the flip side of what you said? That is, If God DOES draw you to Christ, then you ARE coming.

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

Bob Carabbio said:
You didn't mention the imaginary "Regeneration" that the Calvinist invents as a "transitory stage before salvation"

Calvinists like to talk about a "logical order" of things, as in the diagram below. That doesn't imply that any time elapses between, for example, regeneration and conversion. Several of the "steps" happen at the same time.

It seems to me that you've spent time with people who explained Calvinism badly.

Carl Emerson · Dec 8, 2019

Radagast said:
Actually, there are not.

There are neurons in the heart. They control the contractions of the heart muscle. They are not "brain cells."

...the human heart, in addition to its other functions, actually possesses a heart-brain composed of about 40,000 neurons that can sense, feel, learn and remember. The heart brain sends messages to the head brain about how the body feels and more...

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
...the human heart, in addition to its other functions, actually possesses a heart-brain composed of about 40,000 neurons that can sense, feel, learn and remember. The heart brain sends messages to the head brain about how the body feels and more...

You may have read that on the Internet, but it's complete rubbish.

The neurons in the heart do not "feel, learn, and remember," they control the beating of the heart muscle, adjusting for everything that's going on. That's all.

See Brain Cells in the Heart? | NeuroLogica Blog

Carl Emerson · Dec 8, 2019

I grant that science seems divided on the issue.

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
I grant that science seems divided on the issue.

No, the actual scientists are in complete agreement. What happened is that a misunderstanding of the science went viral.

jayem · Dec 8, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
...the human heart, in addition to its other functions, actually possesses a heart-brain composed of about 40,000 neurons that can sense, feel, learn and remember. The heart brain sends messages to the head brain about how the body feels and more...

The innervation of the heart is purely mechanical. It's a conducting system which transmits nerve impulses controlling the heart's rate, rhythm, and contractility. Much like nerves control the contraction of muscles in the GI tract so that food passes from the stomach to the small intestine, and indigestible waste is expelled from the colon. The cardiac neurons have nothing to do with personality, emotion, judgement, memory, or cognitive processes. Damage or disease of the conducting system results in dysrhythmias (like atrial or ventricular fibrillation, heart block, and others.) Which can be successfully treated with drugs, pacemakers, or implantable defibrillators. But--other than causing an affected patient anxiety about his heart condition--has no effect on mental function.

jayem · Dec 8, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
No walking on water then...

Not without some kind of floatation device.

Radagast · Dec 8, 2019

jayem said:
The innervation of the heart is purely mechanical. It's a conducting system which transmits nerve impulses controlling the heart's rate, rhythm, and contractility.

Exactly. And your nervous system is constantly adjusting for posture (higher heart rate when you're standing), exercise activity (higher when you're active), emotional state (usually higher when you're anxious), and a bunch of other things.

fwGod · Dec 9, 2019

holo said:
The concept of free will popped up in a discussion I have with @Sanoy. I think it should have its own thread to keep things a little tidy.

Is free will real? Can it be real, given what we know about natural laws? Is it truly possible, philosophically speaking?

There are different conceptions of what free will means. What I mean by it is something like this: the ability to make a choice (or think of something) without that choice being determined by something else. For example, you can use your will to choose pizza over tacos, but is it a free choice? Do you pick one over the other for no reason? Or is it in fact determined by, say, that you just don't happen to like the taste of one of them (which obviously isn't something you freely chose)?

What would be an example of truly free will being exercised?

(Posted in this subforum because it has implications for how we think about morality.)

If you don't happen to like an option food to put on your pizza then that is your free will to choose not to order it on your pizza.

You are the one that doesn't like it. Someone else is not forcing you to choose or not choose it.

The fact that you don't like an option food, is not a bondage to you. It's not that you aren't making a free will choice if you don't like the option.

But if you think that not liking a topping is a bondage to you then choose to order the topping that you don't like and see if you can enjoy eating it.

Either way, you'd still be making a choice. There's no way to get around that. Choosing is a freedom, not a bondage. If you don't choose then someone else will eventually have to choose for you.
They will choose according to their preference, not yours. So that is a bondage.

However, if you want others to choose for you so you won't feel in bondage.. that isn't a freedom at all. That's a self-deception.

If you don't want to choose because you want to avoid the consequences of making a bad choice.. then trying not to choose is still a choice.

If you don't know what choice will result in bad or good, the only way to find out is pick an option or not pick.

* pick a.
* pick b.
* don't pick a, don't pick b. the default is c.

Carl Emerson · Dec 9, 2019

Sorry I raised this as it is off topic anyway.

Although that fact that we can't control our heart rate would seem to indicate we haven't got free will...

durangodawood · Dec 9, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
.....that fact that we can't control our heart rate would seem to indicate we haven't got free will...

Say what?

Free will doesnt mean you can control anything and everything with your mind. It just means you can influence some decisions.

Bob Carabbio · Dec 9, 2019

Radagast said:
It seems to me that you've spent time with people who explained Calvinism badly.

That's really all you find in sites like this one. I've been told by "Calvinists" any number of times that "TULIP" is a POOR representation of "Calvinism". But since I'm Non-Systematic, I really don't care what the "Academic definition" of it is.

jayem · Dec 9, 2019

Carl Emerson said:
Sorry I raised this as it is off topic anyway.

Although that fact that we can't control our heart rate would seem to indicate we haven't got free will...

It is possible to a degree. You can increase your heart rate with exercise. And lower it with relaxation techniques. Such as meditation. I’ve read that experienced yoga practitioners have lower heart rates and blood pressure while posing.

And prayer also elicits the relaxation response. It can decrease heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and levels of stress hormones. But it doesn’t matter to which deity or deities the prayer is directed. It’s simply another way to achieve the physiological benefits of relaxation.

There are anecdotes to the contrary, but I’m not aware of any reliable evidence that precise voluntary control of cardiovascular function is possible. This would be lowering you heart rate to exactly 40 beats/min. Or keeping your blood pressure at precisely 100/60.

holo · Dec 9, 2019

Silmarien said:
Disciplines are really difficult--the initial choice to cultivate one might be external, but the will to continue is a choice that you make over and over again.

To keep it tidy, I think we should distinguish between will and choice. Computers make choices, but in those cases it's usually obvious to us why the choice is made and how it couldn't have been different. The question is if there's something to our minds that could allow us to make choices that couldn't even in principle be predicted. As in input X and Y will necessarily produce outcome Z under conditions A + B. Or to use an example from Sam Harris: if you could rewind time for, say, a minute, the exact same thing would happen every time even if you did it a million times, because the conditions that made it happen would still be the same.

Silmarien said:
That probably depends on how you view cause and effect. If you're a materialist, then it's difficult to fit in free will (or consciousness), but I think it gets easier if you take something like an Aristotelian account of causality and associate freedom with final causes.

I see I have a bit of reading to do (I know very little about Aristotle's thinking apart from everything having four causes, the "final" one being the intention or purpose of the thing, if I remember correctly).

Silmarien said:
I'm a Mysterian about free will, though. I think it, along with consciousness, is a deep mystery of reality and not something that can be reduced to causality.

I'm a bit familiar with the idea that consciousness may be fundamental, which sounds crazy at first but that people like David Chalmers and Donald Hoffman (they're on several podcasts if that's your thing) makes sound a little less crazy.

Silmarien said:
Yep, definitely. Though I'm in the camp that would actually claim that determinism itself is a deeply immoral view to hold, since it involves the denial of responsibility, which is extremely problematic on any common sense understanding of human nature.

I don't agree it denies responsibility, but I think it would be right to say that it denies the possibility of guilt in a true sense (it will of course exist as an emotion and a cultural concept regardless). If we know exactly why someone did something wrong, we would see that they didn't in fact have a free choice. We already apply this kind of reasoning to excuse what people do in life-threatening situations for example, or when a kid who's been bullied for years finally snaps and beats his oppressor to the ground and stomps on him. It boils down to how much we know about why people do things. If we knew everything, I believe we wouldn't pass moral judgment on anyone. BUT, that's not to say there's no place for law or punishment. It still makes sense to hold people accountable, not to mention to deter harmful behaviour and protect the innocent. But we couldn't truly condemn anyone. Whatever they did was the only thing they could possibly do. It would remove the foundation for revenge for revenge's sake.

holo · Dec 9, 2019

Radagast said:
If "free" means "entirely uncaused," then it excludes actions taken for any kind of reason or in pursuit of any kind of desire.

Seems like a pretty useless sort of free will to me.

Haha, I guess you're right about that. It seems to me that when a choice is determined by a desire (to be saved or get drunk or whatever), the question becomes where that desire came from. And I don't think we can pick or choose desires. We can decide to cultivate one desire and starve another, but that itself comes from a desire.

If it's true that free will doesn't really exist, then we can truly not condemn each other for anything.

It seems intuitive to believe in free will, that's how our own minds appear to us. But hypothetically, I wonder, if we hadn't had this intuition to begin with, would we start believing in free will when we read the bible? Paul, for example, talks about sinners being what they are by birth and not really by (free) choice. They're slaves to sin and can't really not sin. IMHO the entire bible makes much more sense if you read it without supposing man's free will but instead God's sovereignty.

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