Does free will exist? Is existence itself predetermined?

> I don't want to feel like a puppet who has no choice in the matter.
The alternative of non-determined world is to allow your decisions to be a glorified dice rolls. You are so free! Who knows what option will you choose? It could be one, two, three, four, five or even a six! Only a blind fucking chance can decide it for you.

You will get over it eventually. Trust me, I've been there.

Your life's course is predetermined until you begin to determine it. It is really quite simple lol

free from what motherfucker

if you're a christian then ask a priest

It's an illusion because of our own perception of time.

Wait until we make headway with particle physics and you'll get a definitive answer.
(Note: This isn't pseudoscience, it fits into our understanding of existence. I could throw around buzzwords all day, but read up on it for yourself. Scary shit)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality#Relativity

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle#Implications_for_time_travelers

Exodus 9:12, Numbers 22:28 etc. destroys any argument that Free Will exists, from a biblical perspective that is.
You can never assume your will is free when God and Satan can brainjack you at any time without your knowledge.

"free will" isn't even a Christian concept and it doesn't fit anywhere in any form of monotheism. It's an old outdated enlightenment concept apologists dug up to sound more 'rational and philosophical'.

Even now, as an Atheist turned Christian, I cringe every time I hear it.

>ruled by the descendants of those that built the modern world.

Out-breeding those that have laid foundations for the modern world doesn't make your their descendants, only their bane.

Also, your greatest administrators and commanders have hailed from the Balkans, in case you've forgotten.

perhaps not 'free will' but you could argue that 'will' exists.
I'm satisfied with that.

There are good reasons to think that free will and determinism are compatible.

Also good reasons to think free will is a spook.

I don't think free will exists. The closest thing you'll get is choosing something for the sake of proving you have the choice.

>Does free will exist?
No.
>Is existence itself predetermined?
Yes.

Fortunately the illusion of it is there, so rest easy.

Why is existence itself predetermined?

what reasons show free will and determinism are compatible?

fucking this

In fact, I would say this is true of almost all philosophical conundrums. Your answers to the big questions may differ, but your reality remains unchanged. It's inconsequential

That doenst mean its useless though, its an easy A for your electives/humanities

>inconsequential
But this is false. Reading up on some big think philosophy may well change ones perception of the world. This can make people change their lives for better or worse.

One is that there is no relationship whatsoever between freedom and causality.

If this were true then it wouldn't matter whether or not the universe was causally determined.

A second is from the opposing consideration - that causality is necessary for free will. If this were true then we would require determinism in order to have free will. That is, if my will wasn't causing my actions then how would they be willed actions at all, let alone free willed? In other words, It would be necessary that there be a strict deterministic relationship between my brain states and my actions - otherwise my actions would have nothing to do with my brain states, which are ultimately my mental states.

Well your actions are determined by an untold number of variables your brain have picked up from the day you've been born. If we hold physics and biology as authority of what is true, free will is deterministic.

Not sure if this is a comment on anything I said...?
Also don't think physics or biology tell us the universe is determined (we assume determinism and do physics and biology with that in mind) But sure. Yeah. Free will, under certain arguments, can be deterministic. Or, under other arguments, free will can give fuc all about determinism and exist in either case (determined or indetermined). Of course there are also presumptions to the opposite effect - that free will relies on indeterminism. I guess the thrust of my point is that it isn't as simple as "no free will cuz muh atoms" and that the issue of free will is pretty separable from the issue of determinism.

You can have a predetermined universe while also having free will. All the events are laid out already, but that doesn't means that they're not a result of free choices.

I've studied philosophy, spirituality, and religion a fair amount and here's my take.
The majority of life lives a pre-determined existence. When one cannot realize the self and alter oneself away from simply acting on the urges we experience, there is no free will. When one can realize the self, question the self, and direct oneself away from base urges then one can then finally exercise free will.
I just woke up, but if you're intrigued just ask me questions and it'll get my brain going.

You have free will insofar as you are able to control something in your life.

Free will is not something you HAVE or don't have. It isn't a "thing" that "exists". It is an act — an exchange of wills.

When I assert my will over things that I have control over, I am exercising my freedom over them. My will is free compared to theirs.

People who say it "doesn't exist" got lost in the labyrinth of books and forgot what reality is like.

Define "free will".

Not OP, but, going by the posts in these types of threads you generally see two different definitions:

1. Will not influenced by necessity - this is all the people saying free will does not exist.

2. Will with the capacity to influence - this is all the people saying it does.

Our free choices are decided by God's decree

>2. Will with the capacity to influence - this is all the people saying it does.
It seems like they're implying more properties than that.

Who's saying yes and implying otherwise?

You can choose to go to heaven.

You can choose to go to hell.

If you do not choose either, you will have an opportunity to prove to God that you are as He is, fail, and go to hell.

The Fall of Man includes you. You have choices to make. Pretending you don't doesn't absolve you of responsibility.

God's foreknowledge does not impact upon you, and He does not tell you what choices you will make. So your free will and His foreknowledge coexist peacefully.

Only god (if he exists) has free will, the rest of us are constrained by our circumstances.

>if he exists
There's hundreds of gods, user. It's not even a matter of not existing.

Just so we're clear, we all know that will originating from humans is false and that material forms cannot be the source of anything, right?

>material forms cannot be the source of anything
What the fuck is the source then? Nothingness? Yeah that makes sense, the source of everything is nothing.

Humans have worshipped hundreds (thousands) of gods, but that doesn't necessarily reflect the existence or otherwise of "god", particularly if you're talking about a deist conception of "god", or using the word "god" to mean "the cause of the universe" or "the universe and everything in it" or something of the sort, as many religious people seem to.

There's hundreds of gods, on earth, right now.

Unless you think that humans have some magic inside them that gives them free will, I don't see how.

A human being is literally and objectively, a biological system that can be influenced by environment.

>Does free will exist?
No

>Is existence itself predetermined?
QM suggests it might be random rather than pre-determined

Free will exists because we have no choice.

The free will we have is only whether we go on living or if we choose to end it. All else is part of nature and determinate. However we can reflect on determinate actions and eventually make ourselves make more rational decisions.

>QM suggests it might be random rather than pre-determined

Not really, QM is a deterministic theory, it's more a matter of limits on knowledge than actual non-determinism.

>QM is a deterministic theory
Only a few interpretations, and they are not as supported as the stochastic ones

Quantum mechanics is deterministic, but it is also probabilistic -- i.e. you can deterministically calculate the probability of a random event happening. This is to distinguish it from non-deterministic (i.e. stochastic) systems where you do not generally have "one" solution but an entire family of solutions depending on random variables.n a non-deterministic / stochastic model.

A human being is also something with the capacity to influence others.

As always, discussions regarding "freedom" boil down to what type of freedom you're talking about: freedom-from or freedom-to.

>A human being is also something with the capacity to influence others.

And? Whether or not people get influenced, or whether or not some people have the capacity to influence, is all a matter of biology and/or environment.

>And?
If we have a capacity to influence, then our will is free insofar as that capacity can be fulfilled.

Everything is determined (with possibly some true randomness as well). Either way, it's not some transcendent "you" that's doing anything.

This used to bother me, but then I realised that letting it bother me was not what I wanted to do, so I chose to stop letting it bother me.

The big advantage is that when I look at my own past, I see it as a physical system and therefore don't feel any regret. But I don't look at the future that way, that would be unwise.

You are puppet and puppeteer simultaneously.

>using your determined will to defend free will.

You aren't a puppet because there is no puppeteer.

determinist sam harris cultist /r/atheism retards cant understand retrocausality

Asking that question in what is popular to believe to be a predetermined existence today is an oxymoron that I've never been comfortable with. There's cause and effect, sure, but with everything in such a flux all the time I find it hard to swallow a deterministic model of the absolute.
I'm of the opinion that existence is, essentially, rudderless (within the perimeters of what physics can allow) , but certain patterns and motifs get established after a while and become familiar on observation. It's easier to quantify the existence and nature of an object or an agent after the fact and connect the dots with hindsight vision instead of determining it "in the moment" where anything (or almost anything) goes, thus the error.

Bender: "So you know what I'm going to do before I do it?"

God: "Yes."

Bender: "Well what if I do something else?"

God: "Then no, I don't know that."

Yes (even in a deterministic universe, your will following casual factors does not make not free). No (quantum events are truly random in action, so hard determinism is out of the picture).

>your
What reason is there to believe that an arbitrary physical form has "ownership" over the will?

>so I chose to stop letting it bother me.
it sounds like the only free will we have is to be aware or ignore the determinism

t. libertarian that don't understand basic phenomenology

>Pre determined most likely but that doesn't change anything

It actually has huge implications for ethics, society, criminal justice...

I'm just floored by how many people say the fact that we don't have free will doesn't matter. It does.

It means that we can't rely on "free will" for anything and we have to find causal solutions to social problems.

>Fortunately the illusion of it is there, so rest easy.

I don't experience the illusion of free will.

I experience a will.

It seems clear to me that that will is the product of prior causes stretching way, way back, even to before I was born.

So, I don't experience any illusion of free will.

I don't feel like I can choose my desires.

I don't feel like I could be doing anything else right now other than what I'm actually in the process of doing.

Never felt that way. I really didn't understand it when I was a kid and people kept trying to tell me I had "free will". I didn't experience it and people tried to act like I was lying when I was being perfectly honest.

define free will

If we go by "inability to predict future" then from my perspective I am the only being with free will. From perspective of observer who can´t interact with world, then no one does have free will.

Whether you "chose" to "let" something bother you or not itself would be the product of prior causes.

If your brain were wired up in such a way that the realization that free will is a myth would lead to changes in your brain involving heavy releases of anxiety-inducing neurotransmitters, it would bother you a lot. And you couldn't just "choose" to "not let it bother you".

Even the movements of your muscles are controlled by motor circuits in your brain. When the neurotransmitter levels of those regions is off, you either will move erratically/violently, or won't move at all.

It's a mechanistic system.

Did Charles Whitman freely choose to shoot all those people?

Guess we can't punish anyone, huh.

What would be the point of punishing people if free will existed?

They could just use their "free will" to choose not to be reconditioned by the punishment, so they would go offend again.

Alternatively, they could just use "free will" to avoid reoffending, with no need for reconditioning.

Punishment only actually makes sense under a no free will paradigm. But it makes sense for the sake of reconditioning people or keeping society safe. Not for sadism.

Seriously! These threads are always just a bunch of people who don't know the term soft determinism.

Why is soft determinism a better outlook than hard determinism?

Whether you "choose" to commit suicide or not is largely determined by the thoughts and sensations generated by the arrangement of chemicals and energy in your body, which itself is determined by prior causes like your genetics and the environment you've been in.

So even that isn't free.

Yeah, locking up murderous sociopaths so they don't keep killing us is just silly.

>Yeah, locking up murderous sociopaths so they don't keep killing us is just silly.

Locking people up for the safety of society is more like quarantine than punishment, really. It could have a punishing effect but, as you just said, in this case the primary purpose is to keep society safe.t

Also, if free will existed then anyone could just "freely choose" to become a murderer at any moment. It would be hard to trust your children, your own family, anyone. Then again, if you're going to trust anyone in this "free will" world, you may as well trust people with bad reputations, even if they had had screwed you over in the past--because hey, maybe today they'll use their free will to suddenly turn good. Their past doesn't define them, am I right?

Taking the idea of libertarian free will to its logical conclusions is the epitome of irresponsibility. I suppose I should be thankful that society functions on an incoherent mess of free-will-belief and no-free-will-belief, rather than the total mess that would result from a society that took free will 100% seriously.

The will has ownership over itself, and is a major component of what makes you, well you.

>The will has ownership over itself

What does that mean?

Hmm, giving it further thought, the statement is kind of vacuous. I'll get back to you on that one.

Fair enough.

friendly reminder that after (???) years, a big bang is bound to happen with the same initial conditions as the one that created our current universe. do you know what that means? (???) the same exact post will be made by copies of us, with the exact same feelings us as.

no i am not being philosophical or anything.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future#Future_of_the_Earth.2C_the_Solar_System_and_the_Universe

i just hope that we won't be sentient when that happens. i don't feel like living this life again and again eternally.

Having given it a bit further thought with my currently coffee-less mind, I'll abandon that statement. Instead, I think it can be said that you own your will, in that the matters of the mind-body are the primary determining factors of the direction the will shall take. The will however I don't think can be considered unfree in these conditions, because the determining factors aren't impositional or limiting, but instead catalytic; the will takes from them of its own accord.

fuck

holy shit . . . .

Wait, does that mean the universe is locked into a continual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth? Neat, that's what I always figured.

Oh shit user, I remember seeing this post before. Deja vu

with our current understanding of physics, this would be a reasonable conclussion.

once this universe ends, the next one will most likely be completely different.
but as the time goes on, a universe will be bound to have the same initial conditions as the ones that created the current one, effectively creating a 100% accurate copy of it.

But since there would be an infinite number of varrying universe, you would also need an infinite amount of time. Even when you suicide you are forced to return.

>infinite number of varrying universe
check the pic again. the amount of possible different universes is incomprehensibly large, but not infinite.

of course by not any means i am a scientist, this is just my rough speculation which might have nothing to do with reality.

More infinite than No Man's Sky.

Ammi right? Hahahaha

There is only free will. Existence is not predetermined.
matter is made of mind, and mind is made of matter.

prove it

Everything is vibration.
Interlocking harmonics.
Propulsion, repulsion, attraction.
Everything is mind, it is created from the mind.
In turn the mind is created by everything.

That's a lot of vague and unnecessary properties. The will doesn't have to owe to anything.