Prove that humans have free will

Get everyone else to play along

Easy
see All knowledge is faith based. I can believe I'm Max Steiner (which I actually am) and you can believe you are a girl.

Sam Harris can go suck his own science ass dick and we are all just as correct as each other.

lol jk: I'm the only person who actually exists.

>I'm the only person who actually exists.
hey dude same,I actually had to go to the hospital for this once though.

Causality has no inherent proof, therefore it follows everything that comes into existence is self-sufficient and it's own cause for existing. If that is the case then all one does is freed from environmental or causes from the past, and one can really say that one does something only because one's own being causes (or is the only actual, present, self explaining cause for) the action.

There ya go. Thank me later.

It doesn't. To explain is to excuse. To know all is to forgive all.

based

Your post is a self-contradictory mess.

Prove you're human.

You do have fucking breasts though.

not mammaries

hang out near pregnant women and see if you get sympathetically pregnant?

that sounds like a terrible idea

what's your novel about?

Ignoring supernatural possibilities, the universe (on a micro level) is either random, or predictable. It either follows a totally solid set of rules and never breaks them (ones we have most likely not discovered yet), or outcomes of interactions are totally unpredictable.

In the random case, humans have no free will; we are all determined by the random variations on a micro scale. A criminal or an upstanding citizen are just a single flip of a subatomic particle away from each other, and it's not the criminal's fault he's where he is. It's just bad luck. No free will.

In the deterministic case, humans have no free will; we are all determined by the set of rules rigidly constraining everything. A criminal or an upstanding citizen are set in their places by the `starting position' of the universe, as it may be thought of. It's just the way things are. No free will.

The ONLY way humans can experience what we believe to be free will is a supernatural element---something external to the physical universe which is not bound by logic and reason. It has the ability to make what we call a choice, and to transmit this information in such a way that our bodies do what these supernatural things want them to.

did you get good medical care from you?

Good summary. "Free will" is the old "unmoved mover" concept writ small.

Why does it matter? Whether or not free does or doesn't exist, humans will continue to act as if they do possess free will.

Why do Atheists care so much about disproving free will?

I don't believe in Free Will and I don't believe in Reincarnation but only one of those things keeps coming up online. Why?

What difference does it make whether one believes in Free Will or not. We're still gonna act of the assumption that people have free will anyway.

Our court system for ex. could not even function without the existential presupposition of Free Will. It would certainly be unjust to execute some poor fucker who knew not what the fuck he do.

New Atheists like Sam Harris wanna hold Muslims responsible for their fucked up beliefs yet argue that people don't have Free Will. It's not their fault right? Their wills aren't free, certainly not under Jihadism. Makes 0 sense.

>What difference does it make whether one believes in Free Will or not.
None at all, but we're having a philosophical discussion here. It's not about what difference it makes, it's about trying to attain wisdom.
Besides, I didn't say I was an atheist. Projecting, much? :^)

>our court system
hence why some people advocate consequentialism as a more humane ethics for punishment

new atheism has become a parody of itself, though

I don't understand how you can be a materialist and not believe in free will.

The whole assumption that a deterministic universe means we don't have free will seems to rest on some sort of backwards dualism, where our mental states are slaves to physics.

But materialism should consider these things one and the same. Humans have free will, and the process they use to reach their decisions is through chemical interactions, or the decision itself is a chemical reaction. This should be the materialist position.

Otherwise, the materialist seems to either claim mental states and chemical states are distinct with one being subordinate to the other OR free will is defined as being able to retroactively make a decision you didn't want to. Either one seems stupid.

>New Atheists like Sam Harris wanna hold Muslims responsible for their fucked up beliefs yet argue that people don't have Free Will. It's not their fault right? Their wills aren't free, certainly not under Jihadism. Makes 0 sense.

>Implying the new atheists have a choice in how they act

how can physics be a slave to our mental states if the vice-versa is wrong

anyone who argues for this seems to have a poor understanding (ie suspect education) in hard sciences

>no Navigateur

For me, Free Will is just a useful illusion. I've read the arguments, no free will is the right LOGICAL choice. However, i'm just gonna pretend I have free will anyway.
I mean, the very concept of logic and reason presuppose we have Free Will in the first place... to have the capacity to find truth from falsehood and ACT on the truth vs. my fucking imagination or some wackjob ideology.

We have shifted as a civilization, from believing in God to believing in Ourselves.
For fuck sake, the more I think about it, the more I realize that Western Civilization in its totality hinges on the presupposition of Free Will.

No Free Will = No Modern Western Civ.

My novel is about a selfish man who doesn't understand what its like for me, a woman, who is still in school, a stay at home mom, and a 20 year old man.

The only one to whom you can prove that you have free will is yourself.

It's neither, they are one in the same. I'm speaking from a materialist perspective.

I would free will the shit out of her, jussayin

If you're a monkey or brain dead maybe. Look at successfully reformed addicts, geniuses, or holocaust survivors if you want to see the power of the rational faculty expressed in full.

I side with the existentialists in believing that those with intact rational faculties seek to delude themselves into thinking they're helpless in order to quell the anxiety caused by true freedom of choice.

More to the point, free will can only reasonably be thought of in a 'solipsistic' way. The actions of others may or may not be predictable or deterministic, but they are not examples of free will. To get an idea of what's going on, read this paper (it's actually about consciousness and experience, but the same kind of ontology applies): individual.utoronto.ca/benj/ae.pdf

how about this? Fuck you.

i figured most discussions just presuppose we parallel our conception of "other people's" will (or lack thereof) to ourselves. we assume we're not somehow exceptions to science or anything.

in the end every argument can only be a hypothetical model. the question is how much we want to believe that model (what we see, believe, and construct) represents our own experience, no?

you can't prove they don't.

you literally can't prove anything metaphysical, nerd

I'm not into philosophy per se, but I would believe that Tank Man had some free will going on.

I don't know what you're trying to say here. My point is that there is a fundamental metaphysical (and conceptual) difference between one's own free will, and the supposed "free will" of others. This has nothing to do with science, which is too epistemologically limited to deal with the issue, as the existence of any given individual's free will cannot be verified by the so-called "scientific method", IE intersubjective verification. You can say that just means free will doesn't exist, but that's a stupid ontology for which there is no real motivation.

This, to be honest pham.

>cannot be verified
i'm saying isn't it a matter of choosing to believe in this extrapolation?

>no real motivation
what about consequentialist instead of retributivist punishment?

The problem lies not with free will. The problem lies within language. Our language allows the idea of free will, a concept that is not compatible with the way of things.

Since the big bang, the universe and all within it have acted according to the law of cause and effect. To believe that humans are an exception to this rule requires generous premises.

That is not to say that determinism is correct. When you make a decision, it is of your own choosing. Rather, things are already accounted for, and that decision was always the decision you were going to make.

I'm not conveying this idea well. However, if you really think about language and the limits it puts on thought, I think you will really start to worry about the free will debate a lot less.

In the end, questions like this are all a matter of perspective. Try to view it from as many angles as you can.

>i'm saying isn't it a matter of choosing to believe in this extrapolation?
You can choose to believe whatever you want.

>what about consequentialist instead of retributivist punishment?
Not a real motivation, and ethics doesn't need to follow from ontology in any case.

>You can choose to believe whatever you want.
This isn't actually accurate, btw. You don't really choose to believe things. Beliefs are a result of psychological and cultural forces.

Free from what?

Fate

...

Good question.

Is this a troll post?

This is true

We so obviously don't it's boring to discuss. More interesting is to discuss what is a human when we talk about things like this. The mind, the concious mind, the entire biological construct. The reason I says it is interesting is because if you consider the true core of your human identity to be your concious mind then I'd argue humans don't even have will, let alone free will. And are in fact merely conciously aware of the tethered will of something outside themself.

>newfag
This is Veeky Forums. Every post is troll post /except this one/

You go on and choose to believe whatever you want bb.

You say that now, but how many receipts have you handled and soy products have you eaten? Just being fat also increased gyno risk just because more estrogen

They don't.

ITT: manchildren too scared to take responsibility for their lives

If no free will exists, then guilt cannot exist either. I could steal from someone or hurt someone and not be held accountable for it. Following that line of thought, no society is possible.

Therefore, even though free will cannot be proven strictly logically (nearly nothing can), it is empirically possible and, even more so, a normative necessity.

Ah, the good old practical postulate. Borderline tyranny.

As with all things the answer is that sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. The exercise of free will takes discipline and thought but it is one of the things that makes humans different from pigs, which do whatever their brain and environment instructs them to. I know Ayn Rand triggers this board because of its insecurities about being seen as an edgelord but this thought is relevant: "While animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself." However man isn't always acting freely, often we allow ourselves to be carried along by the currents of our background, our society, our past, our instincts, and physical forces and needs. Extricating ourselves from these forces is what makes us special.

...

Veeky Forums

The amount of non-sequiturs in a single post. Oh boy.

> scared to take responsibility for their lives
But responsibility is based on the idea that free will exists. To assume responsibility, without arguing for free will, is to beg the question.

>If no free will exists, then guilt cannot exist either.
Yeah, and if no unicorns exist, then anger cannot exist either. They're unrelated phenomena. Guilt is not dependant on free will. Guilt is a complex psychophysical reaction to some action you did.

>I could steal from someone or hurt someone and not be held accountable for it. Following that line of thought, no society is possible.
No, by following that line of thought you follow the slippery slope.
At any rate, people do steal and societies do still exist.

>it is empirically possible and, even more so, a normative necessity.
If it's empirically possible then it is physically possible. But if so, then you must be able to empirically verify this. Can you show us that empirical object you call 'free will'?

>normative necessity
No.

I'm sorry, maybe this wasn't clear enough since I am not a native speaker: by "guilt", I wasn't referring to the feeling caused to someone after doing something that is considered wrong. I meant that we, as a society, tend to declare someone guilty or not guilty for a crime allegedly committed by someone. This presupposes that a person can be held liable responsible for his actions, therefore that free will exists. If we deny free will's existence, then criminal law is wrong and shouldn't exist at all.

All I'm saying is that the fact free will cannot be proven doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that we shouldn't make judgments based on it. Strictly speaking, causality cannot be proven either, therefore scientific knowledge is impossible. That doesn't mean we don't benefit from it.

can be held responsible*, sorry for that one

Prove that fate exists.

brotip: you can't

Implying he has

what makes you think people are an exception to the patterns we have observed over millions of experiments over thousands of years?

also, nobody's saying that ethical judgments should or shouldn't be made. agency and ethics can be independent.

Humans have predictable will.

People have the ability of rational thinking, for one.

Could you explain how you mean that? I don't see what is the point of ethical judgments when all human actions are predetermined.

>I meant that we, as a society, tend to declare someone guilty or not guilty for a crime allegedly committed by someone
So by "guilty" you meant "guilty" in the sense of law? Ok.

>This presupposes that a person can be held liable responsible for his actions, therefore that free will exists.
Yes, well, it *presupposes* that free will exists, but presupposing something doesn't logically entail it. That's the definition of begging the question. You must argue for the conclusion that free will exists, not presuppose it. How does our legal systems justify free will? What's your argument?

>If we deny free will's existence, then criminal law is wrong and shouldn't exist at all.
Why on earth shouldn't it exist? Instead of punishing the "guilty" ones by putting them behind bars, we can help them: medically, psychologically, or otherwise.

>All I'm saying is that the fact free will cannot be proven doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that we shouldn't make judgments based on it.
The thing is that you haven't yet provided a definition of 'free will'. What on earth is it? Substance of some kind? A human capacity? Does it imply a non-physical soul? If there's no working definition, "cannot be proven doesn't mean it doesn't exist " can be said just about anything you can think of (unicorns, ghosts, etc.).

>we shouldn't make judgments based on it.
Making judgements on the basis of some nebulous entity you can't even define is dubious to many people.

>Strictly speaking, causality cannot be proven either, therefore scientific knowledge is impossible.
Not only is this another non-sequitur from your repertoire, you've also given no reason whatever to assume that "causality cannot be proven". To assert that causality cannot be proven is to have a *proof* that it is not provable. Where's your proof?

At any rate, it of course depends on what you mean by "causality". If you're thinking of causality as something mathematical (you are after all talking about proving things) you are utterly confused.

And in contrast to free will, with causality, we at least know what we're talking about, because there are plenty of theoretically rigorous frameworks for how to think about it. Causality can be defined in many, closely resembling and satisfactory ways.

>Instead of punishing the "guilty" ones by putting them behind bars, we can help them: medically, psychologically, or otherwise.

The argument was that the concept of free will is fundamental to ethics and, moreover, to law. Need I define "ethics", "law" and "free will" and to prove whether there is a relationship between ethics and law, in order that my arguments be not considered non-sequiturs? I thought we were both starting from a common ground, having some notions about what these terms mean. It seems that I am mistaken, and it would take a very long while to explain everything exhaustively, as you seem to think necessary.

Please, present your ideas about free will and why it doesn't exist. I would be very interested to hear them.

this, I agree.

If free will wasn't real, how come morality exists?

Determiniggers: 0
Libertaryans: 1

Free will is the ultimate human meme.

New Atheists hate the concept of deities but cling to muh free will

Muh supernatural phenomenon that has no rational basis

Prove that humans don't have free will

Brotip: you can't

Free will literally cannot exist
I dont think people understand that its not a matter of opinion, it is metaphysically not possible for free will to exist

>it is metaphysically not possible

I Kant

>then criminal law is wrong
Why?. That can still be perfectly serviceable from a game theoretic viewpoint. In fact the emotion of guilt and desire for justice itself probably evolved as mechanisms to help cooperation.

Is humanity a spook? A feral child will have no humanity, no better than an animal.

kys

causality, is the usual line, that you could spontaneously want or do anything

rec books with vapor aesthetics

You didn't really the book, you're putting a shoe on you hand right now

Retard, that is exactly what the discusion is about. If there is fate, there is no free will. Determinism = everything is already written in the Stars, there is only one way to go, there is no way to change your fate etc.

>our mental states are slaves to physics
Yeah what's not clear about that?

>the process they use to reach their decisions is through chemical interactions
So these decisions are stored in some magical place and humas "reach" them using this magical tool called chemical reactions... Doesn't sound very materialistic to me

Free will is an illusion and that's okay. It is not like somebody forced you to do something. When buying groceries at a supermarket, do you feel like somebody is telling you what to do? As long as you feel that YOU are the one who chose to buy orange juice instead of apple juice, I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Proof what numbers are, proof what proof is....

tnx for the chuckle

Free will, in the sense that intellectuals use it, is literally a bad thing.

They say: You did X, but only because you were reacting to Y, which you had no control over. Therefore you were controlled by Y, and were not acting freely.

In other words: you making a logical decision to act a certain way in response to something else is counter to free will.
In other words: having free will would imply that you do shit that you didn't want to do.

Fuck free will.