Free will

Free will, is it real ?

Free will is real in the same sense that travel to the future is real

Travel to the future is traveling to a future you don't exist in.

How would your actions under free will differ from if there wasn't?

the answer is there's no way to tell, because chosing free will over determinism is paradoxical

It depends on how you define it. If you're referring to the intuitive feeling that you consciously control each action subjectively, than that is obviously not real. Eastern philosophy discovered this through mindfulness. Psychology has known this for a while. Modern neuroscience all but proved it. It was kind of obvious from the get go though if (unlike the Greek tradition) don't take each of your feelings as cannon on what reality is truly like.

There are, however, meaningful ways of defining free will which are compatible with objective reality. This has been the goal of countless philosophers, and we've come pretty far I think.

Turkey is just trying to figure that out.

But yeah you'd have to be both scientifically and philosophically illiterate to still grant any credibility whatsoever to human subjective freedom from physical laws.

I know people throw the flat earth comparison whenever they try to discredit someone, kind of like the Hitler card, but in all seriousness given what we've discovered it is far more reasonable to think the earth is flat than to credit subjective free will.

The definition of free will is so vague you can force the answer to be whatever you want it to.

Are we free thinking birds that can do whatever they want? No, things as simple as society block some paths of free will.

Are we machines that can be manipulated by anyone? No, unless you use torture and intense brainwashing, and even then it's not completely effective.

humans experience a measure of freedom.

Define free will first.

If you know the laws of physics and the initial conditions of a system you can predict the behaviour of that system with 100% accuracy.

The big meme tho is apparently fundamental particles have actual unpredictable behaviour, like it is impossible to know with certainty where an electron is. This, along with some gay mental gymnastics, makes the argument that since at a quantum level no one seems to be in control of the human brain, you are.


Personally I don't see how the synapse that triggered this thought having its origin in apparent random chance makes it "free" or "original".

For me, free will is the ability to make a decision based off your own preferences, necessities, whatever, and the ability to consciously know why you made that decision. Whether the building blocks of consciousness are classic physis laws, mysterious spoopy meme-particles or bits of a simulation is unimportant, to me anyway.

The real question is: Is it free?

There is no soul ergo there is no free will.

Conflating soul and free will.

Even the elements of the earth are not free.

Water. When it's current is flowing, it has to bend to the elements that are around it.

Compare that to free will, you can choose to do what you want, but how society allows or restricts you takes away the free part.

There has been a complex domino setup that has been going on since the dawn of time. You only posted this because your nature was nurtured to.

Hey mods, you need to explain why shit threads like this are allowed but homework threads are looked down on

"physical law" is someone's interpretation of a system of mathematical equations which is assumed to model reality based on the subjective experience of the interpreter. But a different interpreter could come up with a sufficient physical law that works for different reasons than yours.

you conclude that subjective freedom of will cannot exist in a universe where particle interaction are inherently based on probabilities and random occurrences. But you made the assumption that the universe is random.

I could just assume that the universe is usually random, and sometimes is not, and free will is a special solution to some algebraic equation I can ass-pull whenever I want, like the delta function. Neither of us would be wrong.

>Free will
The issue of "free from what"
needs to be addressed.

>There has been a complex domino setup that has been going on since the dawn of time. You only posted this because your nature was nurtured to.
I agree with this idea

go away honey, do your summer assignments

Of course not, nothing real is free.

There is no such thing as free will...we are all slaves of the society

Pointless question.

You're free to choose your environment and change some aspects of your mind.

Other than that it depends on environment, genes, lots of context.. and many factors.

No because transformation is inevitable. It's paradoxical to the laws of nature to believe that free will exists.

Maybe

My contributon to this thread.
Honestly, It's a loaded question. As and pointed out. It depends how you define it it. As it is so vague. This thread though I have to say OP asked quite the loaded question.