Do we have free will?

this makes the most sense to me

Why would we not have free will?

If by free will you mean that you have the ability to choose, or not, from among the options apparently available to you, whether they are or not, sure.

Do you have the free will to jump to the moon? No, you don't. Do you have the free will to surprise God, or any other impossible thing? No, you don't.

You might choose to get a dog because you love animals
However, you did not choose to love animals, that is just a desire/passion that you have. You can choose to do what you want, but you cant choose what you want

Call it limited free will or something

What does it even mean for your will to be free?

The most demanding requirement for the freedom of the will is an action which is un-caused. It seems unlikely that we could ever do something which is truly has no antecedent cause, so is it at all possible to have a free will in a world which has cause and effect? If we are in fact impelled to do things, then where is the room for the freedom of the will?

I propose that it is possible to achieve the freedom of the will. If an agent forms the intention to make a conscious decision, then that agent's will is free at that moment.

I anticipate that the response to this proposition would be this, would the information used in the act of consideration necessary for the decision be a sufficient cause to make that decision? Sure it is, however that agent must terminate considerations at some point lest no decision is actually made. So, if the agent has the option to consider information ad infinitum, then what would it mean to say that the agent was caused to make some decision by potentially infinite conditions? In other words it would be to say that the decision was caused by everything which is like saying, I do not know what it was caused by.

There exists freedom of the will.

Can you give me an example of a decision you took with no cause?

We have free will before we are born. On earth we are governed by fate and destiny. Although we can obviously choose to better ourselves or not.

If you swing a golf-club and hit a ball, does the ball choose to move? No, the ball was impelled to movement.

If the whole of the universe is made out of only material things and if understanding movement is merely a matter of understanding the cause of that movement, then you are impelled to do things and you have no real choice in the matter.

If your brain is made of atoms and if atoms are moved around only by other atoms (including forces originating from atoms), then everything you do is ultimately determined by the movement of atoms in your head.

So the argument goes.

>We have free will before we are born.

What exactly did you decide before you were born|?

>decide to eat
>cause his that i am hungry, sure
>but i choose what it is that i eat

free will

Are you seriously suggesting you would just starve to death if you had free will?

This is beyond silly.

You chose your body and agreed to everything that will happen to you and everything you will ever do.

Before you were even born?

Ja

Can you explain why a decision must have no cause for it to qualify as free will?

he's implying that people with higher intelligence have free will and the lower level monkeys don't

it's an self satisfied elitist idea

why do fedoras love this meme

>free
not according to ancaps and libertarians
irony, isn't it?

idk

If we accept the most fundamental laws of physics, every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause going back to the "original" cause (AKA Big Bang). In many ways, the cause and the effect become synonymous on an infinite scale.

Therefore, from a theoretical physics viewpoint, everything that has happened and will happen was predetermined and has been predetermined.

Now, this is not to say that the "original" cause isn't extremely complicated, or that it was itself governed by preexisting laws of physics.

Jesus, the protestants were correct after all?!?!?

Everything has a cause, right? Think of it on particle level. At any given time a particle occupies a time and space, and in that instant the particle also has a velocity. The only way the particle could have obtained such a velocity is by interaction from other particles beforehand, which subsequently changes the position, time and velocity of any particle it interacts with.

Now our thoughts are processed in our brain are really just electrical signals going though neurons and chemical compunds reacting with each other. Now both the electrical signals and the compounds consist of nothing else but particles, which as stated previously can be calculated. Calculated in the sense that if we knew the position and velocity at any given time of all the particles in any isolated system we could calculate the position and velocity of all the particles say one second later. And at any time.

All this is purely physical, there is no room for what we call free will, it would violate causality.

Cont*

Predetermined may not be the best word here.

Nonetheless, people ITT are mixing up the meaning of "free will". That makes sense considering "free" isn't at all given one definition, or "free will" given one interpretation.

Still, based upon the prevailing scientific view, we don't necessarily determine the "cause" and the "effect" of our actions. We decide on the actions, we do these actions, and we cause the results.

But the ultimate responsibility for that action still goes back to the original cause.

Technically, if we develop a computer and software system powerful enough, it might be able to look at all actions this instant and plot out the entire future based upon that instant. But that'd be a real buzzkill, right?

So existence of free will is an argument from ignorance huh?

Really makes you think.

>there is no room for what we call free will
Only when you reduce the world to an abstract level like you're doing. Otherwise, sure there is.

Physical causes don't negate the possibility of free will, which is the measure of one's ability to make decisions and exert one's force over other forces. To say there's no free will implies that we are never a cause ourselves, we have no effects, and we never have any control over these effects, and that we are all with equal power in the world. We are all only with equal power on an abstract level that's so abstract it becomes fairly unrelated to the world, like math.

You chose something because you were reminded of it, or for whatever reason. The illusion of choice is very much real and strong, but ultimately, if you were put into the same situation you were when you picked spaghetti a trillion times, every single time you would've picked the same dish. It was literally impossible for you to make a different choice at that moment. Ideas don't come from nothing, they come from chemical reactions in your brain, and you can't decide those.

Yes. I could have the choice to not post in the thread.

Your ability to make "decisions" comes from physical processes, and those are determined by the laws of physics and so forth.

On an abstract level unrelated to my level of cognition, which dictates the world more than the abstract.

ooogga booga ooogga
Cubical square to the 98th power.

Because becoming responsible for your own actions regardless of what rotten circumstances you are in is a scary proposition.
Better to blame your environment for why you're fat. Otherwise you could be blamed.

physicalism is such a meme position.

Yes.

We don't need this thread every day.

ultimately no, but from the only perspectives we currently posses we appear to, so we might as well behave accordingly

why is blame necessary?

>Because becoming responsible for your own actions regardless of what rotten circumstances you are in is a scary proposition.
True and powerful. Easier to pretend that the so called disenfranchised classes don't have any agency when in actuality they do.

>>but i choose what it is that i eat
No, you ate something you liked or something that was nutritious.

if youve got it all figured out then show your working, faggot

People who deny free will are really the most retarded niggers in existence.

They should be shot.

Only god has free will, the rest of us have a limited ability to choose between the options fate provides us with.

fucking this

both internal and external factors

also, free will can be corrupted by sin

are you retarded

i didn't ask to be in this human body you dipshit

The choosing of the external factors which end up influencing you ultimately depend on free will.

Your body is subject to thousands of stimuli right now, visual, aural, tactile. Do all of them have the same impact? Or does your mind, your free will, select a few of them?

Btfo by kant nigger.

i swear, "free will" is the most debated shit ever

>Or does your mind, your free will, select a few of them?

how is it free will if im not consciously selecting them myself?
i dont have a choice in whether or not i am effected more or less by different stimuli

Maybe there is free will because if you knew every variable that caused you to make a specific choice, you could still choose something else.

Maybe there isn't free will because if you knew every variable that caused you to make a specific choice, you could still not choose something else.

is anything real?

Do we have libertarian free will? No.
Do we have some kind of free will that makes sense given our typical intuition about the subject? Yes.

I still chose to do the thing regardless

That is an illusion

But you still posted nevertheless

naturally

yes, you do

that's not to say that people don't consign their agency to others out of personal weakness of will

see the germans

Okay Veeky Forums, should I go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with my m8s, or stay home and read about language etymology of the Northern European peoples?

I have free will but everyone else is determined

When it's convenient to me, I am determined and it's the people I don't like who have free will

Dude go to the Philadelphia museum of art it's got a kickass armor section from what I hear. I also recommend you check out the Swedish American history museum, you can take Septa down to the AT&T station and it's like a block away in JFK park.

FDR park I mean pls forgib

>i didn't ask to be in this human body you dipshit
That's what you think, unenlightened pleb. Your soul goes to a body that matches it's character.

determination of actions present from the consciousness (sentience) seems to be present to as certain degree, but it seems like most actions are based on the person's physical status rather than their psychological status.

do we live in a deterministic world? too soon to say as we don't understand quantum mechanics well enough yet. I think it is safe to assume almost all actions are deterministic.

Yes, but determinism is also true.

the free will question is a false dichotomy

it presents to equally ridiculous choices, either you're magically separated from cause and effect from everything else in the universe, or you're an automaton

in reality people have will, neither free nor unfree

I was going to say "yes," but then changed my mind.

Smartest answer I've ever heard for the question

>Smartest answer I've ever heard for the question

Nah, it's ignoring the question. There is no false dichotomy, either you're magically separated from cause and effect from everything else in the universe or you don't have free will.

The absurdity is only highlighted when its opposite, predetermination, is something a rational human being cannot argue for.

>either you're magically separated from cause and effect from everything else in the universe or you don't have free will.
Poor, black and white view of the question mate.

Obviously we don't have free will, but the question of free will almost always implies a dichotomy with the other answer being nonsense as well

There's only one answer that is nonsense.

Compatibilism is ridiculous.

>in reality people have will, neither free nor unfree
This, which is to say...

Freedom is relative, so it makes sense to measure free will as relative. You can't simply say it is or isn't, you have to understand the situation it is in and what it holds power over.