Is free will an illusion?

yeah, it does

> nuh uh, YEAH HUH
12 year olds get out

Yes I'm changing, yes I'm gone, yes I'm older yes I'm moving on. And if you don't think it's a crime, you can come along with me.

If it is not an illusion, there is some beautiful complicated shit going on in the universe that is intrinsically unpredictable.
I once thought of this;

If literally everything is constantly -evolving- including the laws of physics (i entertain the thought that the laws of physics might change over like billions of years.)
it is intrinsically impossible to see or let there be a pattern. Because you can only know a system or pattern if you look at if from a higher level hardly from within it. There is no higher level than 'everything'. So the big 'ol 'everything' is intrinsically unpredictable, which I think would make free will a possibility. pls call my bullshit rethoric.

I personally don't think free will exists, because if you were put in a situation and you made choice A, if you were put in the same situation again you'd still choose option A - due to the fact that your reasoning hasn't changed. To clarify, by same situation i dont mean encountering it again- i mean the same situation at the same time, everything the same. hence youd make the same choice, so its not like you really get to choose at all, all choices are predetermined by logic&reason. If someone knew EVERYTHING about ANYTHING minus what decision you make in a scenario, theyd be able to decipher your choice given pros and cons, just like you do in your head. i took a class on this so ive had PLENTY of time to think about it

Used to subscribe to the idea of determinism until i thought about the uncertainty of quantum particles. Any user wanna educate me? I might be a retard

this isnt the board for you if youre not asking questions about everything

the universe is deterministic. the wave functions in QM behave deterministically, even though they are probability distributions.

when observing quantum phenomena, the observation makes the system your observing behave indeterministically, but if you treat the observing system and the system being observed as on single system, that whole thing behaves deterministically.

and as you know, in a deterministic universe, there is no room for free will.

The human can act accordingly to what is programmed in its dna and how the environment shapes and forms their everyday lives. I find that free will is something that only exists if it is allowed, but yet only achieved through seeing through the illusion of your perception of reality. It is something that you can actively and must continually fight for to have because it's something that can be easily taken away. Just like the phenomena that is the Stockholm Syndrome or other things that fuck with the mind. Mentally ill people don't have free will and the retarded don't have free will imho. This is merely speculation.

No, it doesn't.

We're not judging whether you could have done anything differently. We're judging whether you could have done differently in similar circumstances.

Think of it like the smallest golf putt you've ever missed. You could've made a putt of that distance, even though you might have always been destined to missed that one in particular.

yes, it does

e.g. retribution (as prescribed by the left) doesn't make sense if free will doesn't exist.

there are moral and judicial implications.

brainlet detected

Yes. Libertarian free will is a holdover from religion. Compatibilism is evasive semantic word play. Lack of free will undermines all of ethics and jurisprudence. Ignore anyone who tells you to ask a philosopher about this. Most philosophers are the delusional compatibilist kind.

philpapers.org/profile/5895/myview.html
This how a philosopher who follows all the scientific evidence to its logical conclusion answers the philpaper survey.

If it is an illusion, what are you experiencing?

Yes it probably does, but we shouldn't act on it. Won't make the world a better place.

A series of mechanical steps, ie, state changes, while working towards your "decision".

No different than x264's "decisions" while encoding video on my machine right now.

no it doesn't
and yes it has no consequences whatsoever
(daily reminder that justice is not done for the victim by punishing the criminal but is done in the name of society )

Justice doesn't exist.

This. The only true justice is arbitrary and purely individualistic. At which point it might as well be lumped in with personal opinion.

If people have no moral responsibility because they have no free will, then we necessarily have no moral imperative to treat people accordingly because why should we if we have no moral responsibility ourselves.

Sure, vindictive behavior might be considered irrational from a moral perspective if it is true that we have no free will, but that does not mean that vindictive behavior is irrational in all cases. It can most powerfully be used as a deterrent of crime/immoral behavior.

leave it to humanity to debate about consciousness when we haven't even managed to leave the rock we spawned from. can't we all just agree that we don't know for now? we're like little kids coming home from the first day of school and telling our parents that we know everything now

>If people have no moral responsibility because they have no free will
This is your core problem in reasoning here. Not having free will doesn't mean you can decide to do literally anything and say "woops, don't have a choice lol!" That's not how it works, and that's no what's being said here. It's about what means you have for choice, and what is generating your ultimate action. If you know people can't magically do whatever they want, you can interact with people in a way that follows this and creates a better outcome.

Refer to this:
The experience of making a choice is not the actual existence of a choice, but it outlines what the real process is here. You're still responsible for your actions, and it still falls to you to be aware of your motivations and have the foresight to accurately predict outcomes.

Read about master and slave morality as well. Summarized, master morality is determined by outcomes. Slave morality is focused around intentions. Ideally, an individual will balance and transcend both.

>i entertain the thought that the laws of physics might change over like billions of years

What we call "laws of physics" are just complicated manifestations of simple inteactions on the micro scale of the universe observed on the macro scale, made into matematical relationships. Different "laws" wouldn't have to mean more than the smallest building blocks of the universe being built somewhat differently.

I think the free will argument is ultimately semantical. The word "Free" loses all meaning when in the context of these questions. How would you even conceptualize a non-deterministic universe where it gave you as an agent more freedom instead of more randomness?

>Not having free will doesn't mean you can decide to do literally anything and say "woops, don't have a choice lol!"
I think you're missing the point, we don't "decide" to do anything and what generates our ultimate action is not in our control. If the universe obeys the rules of cause and effect then everything that we do, even my typing this response to your post, was predetermined.

Please explain how moral responsibility can exist in a universe which is ultimately determined.

Bro, we live in a simulation. Your life is totally scripted.

>I think you're missing the point, we don't "decide" to do anything and what generates our ultimate action is not in our control.
Which is exactly what I just said.

Your argument was that the notion that everything is predetermined will cause people to do whatever they want, while claiming they have no choice. I just explained why this is nonsense. Unless I see clear evidence that this was comprehended, the conversation will not continue.

Free will implies a non-deterministic world.

But most anti-free-will losers think that there is an observable difference between a deterministic world and a non-deterministic world. So they tend to imply "x doesn't make sense so it shouldn't exist".

Also, most brainlets tend to link those concepts with depression and "supposed fate".

Keep spamming your "free will" threads.

>e.g. retribution (as prescribed by the left) doesn't make sense if free will doesn't exist.
>there are moral and judicial implications

"Retribution" because of morally wrong actions is not a clear way to look at imprisonment in modern society. The reason you put someone in prison is because their actions work against the greater good of society and they need to be rehabilitated, not because they made morally wrong actions and had to be "punished". If there was no such thing as free will, nothing in practice would change, because what you're doing is not judging, you're changing. Thus no free will is compatible with the practical part of morality, even if it can seem a bit unfair.

You can have conscious subjective experience without free will. They are two seperate things.

Compatiblism.
Kant and transcendental freedom.
It doesn't matter.
3 separate reasons you shouldn't give a shit.

Science has the same weird relationship with philosophy as it has with religion, bigest difference is that philosophy is secular and can be applied to some extent, especially in fields like neuroscience

I remember than Sam Harris tried to disprove it, but he only seemed to observe that an action was preceded by neural activity. However, it seems like the biggest criticism is that his studies only showed neural activity that is assigned to an action, which revised the question; how do we make choices that precede that neural activity?

I can choose to punch myself or not, and if I choose to punch myself, there is some neural activity that precedes it, and that's great and all but how do I know I had the freedom to do that? Was the switch to turn on that neural activity my choice or not?

Kant rightly takes a big shit on compatibilism

>Please explain how moral responsibility can exist in a universe which is ultimately determined.
Just because you're predetermined to be an asshole doesn't mean you're not an asshole. Punishing "immoral" behavior is part of the whole cause/effect determinism that will influence human behavior. You know that if you commit crime, you will go to jail. It should be predetermined that you are aware of laws and make the right choices. But if you are predetermined to be immoral, then you are responsible, because it benefits us all.

inb4laws=/=morality. I know, just making a generalization.

>this isnt the board for you if youre not asking questions about everything
This shouldn't be the board for retarded questions like "do we have a free will?".

It genuinely doesn't matter either way and therefore is a complete waste of time to discuss. I welcome questions where the answer has some implication either one way or the other, this simply isn't one of those questions.

This is a Veeky Forums tier discussion for morons who like to think they are intelligent. It's always easy for dumb people to weigh in on questions where the answer doesn't really matter.

>walking with your mom and dad in a city street at night
>some guy mugs your dad, kills him and your mom
>the mugger did nothing wrong and shouldn't be punished because we live in a deterministic world and he had no free will

This is what determinists actually believe.

By their logic, everyone can punish the mugger appropriately and get on with their productive lives as well, because we have no choice but to believe in free will. The world literally can ignore ((((determinists)))) and it won't be right nor wrong in the ((((determinists)))), unless they don't really believe in what they are saying.

It isn't. It's just your shallow and infantile understanding of your world, and yourself.

Two things become relevant:
-What ultimate outcome do you desire, and place value in. The "shoulds" and the "oughts"
-What do you do next. What can be done.

This logical framework is what generates your next approach. You clearly think they did something wrong, what you do to the machine next will follow.

There's nothing "elaborate" about it.

>Science is a branch of philosophy.

This guy gets it.

yes, and so is determinism.

> dont listen to philosophers
> heres a philosopher whos views are just like mine pls listen to him

> What outcome you desire

doesnt that imply that you have the free will to shape the future?? im confused

I don't know.

What is certain, however, is that we need accountability to continue civilization. And this pretty much requires the vast majority of people to believe they are free agents whose actions should have consequences.

Some people can believe they are not truly free and still pull this off because they recognize how important it is. These people are in the minority.

It absolutely does. There is a whole branch of law dealing with this question now.

>free will to
No.
>shape the future
Yes. It implies you're a machine comprised of states that afford you the ability to have preferences, and can use this to guide your subsequent operations.

Without the means to think a thought, or perform an action, a mind will not think it. You don't have a Babylonian sitting around thinking fuck man I just got a pink slip in the mail from the electricity company, and my goddamn radiator[...]. For obvious reasons. It's all about the means, and a series of accumulating interactions and state changes.

It's the universe will for me to act as if I had free-will.

you havent justified why it doesnt matter

faggot

We can only choose our path based on that which we already know. Who controls what we know? Parents, school, church, media? How can we search for new things if we don't know new keywords? just pick one letter to use as a search criteria instead of whole words. You might be surprised.

REWRITE THE RECORD.

Online search engines decide what you get to know about more than anyone else.

nice observation, user

If enough humans beilive in something strong enough, this meme becomes reality.

It becomes socially relevant but does not become reality.

It can also backfire. If people see someone sending a message over and over very desperate to get it through to lots of people, they may start thinking there's something fishy about it.

Social relevance = reality in that society.
Even then things like justice remain subjective, but still.

the free will discussion is a discussion about neuroscience, psychology and quantum mechanics, not philosophy.

according to our current knowledge, free will can not exist in a deterministic (everything is predetermined) or probabilistic (everything is random) universe.

but if string theory is correct, does that allow for the possibility of free will coming from a higher dimension other than the four we're able to observe/experience?

Some of the best preserved lies are those which by construction people automatically need to shut up about as fast as they find out about it - or they are the ones making money on it.

Really makes you feel there's no reason doing your best.

>what is compatibalism

educate yourself retard.

also if free will does not exist, we have no choice but to punish the criminal, it was predetermined just as much as the criminals action.

No there isn't.

Just curious, where would people discuss philosophy? Veeky Forums?

It is a question of philosophy because one must first define free will and that definition can be questioned.

>The reason you put someone in prison is because their actions work against the greater good of society
Maybe in your ideal world but retribution is an important part of even the most liberal justice system.

There does not and has never existed any "greater good for society".

a) There's no free will because your decisions are shaped by your genes, environment and previous experiences.

b) Determinism isn't true either because randomness exists (->quantum mechanics)

we merely lack the technology to predict quantum mechanics.

But maybe there''s is true randomness. Don't you think that might be possible?

i'm a hard determinist, so no, i don't think so. but i'm not saying that i'm definitely right.

yes it's an illusion
exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide
dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2029189/We-CAN-predict-future-The-brain-knows-whats-going-happen-does.html
wired.com/2008/04/mind-decision/

Recent results from the LHC have given some credence to the idea that while there is order "in here" in the universe, there is only a chaotic soup of quantum fluctuations "out there", because they could not find new particles that were predicted to exist

>Free will exists
you have free will

>Free will exists
you don't have any choice in the matter, not even what you believe. So who cares?

This post is correct.

You cannot choose to provide retribution or punishment if you don't have free will.

If you don't have free will, you cannot control if you punish other automatons who weren't responsible for their actions either.

[math]$$\lim{x\to\infty}$[/math]

testing display mode

[math]$lim_{x\to\infty}$[/math]

[math]$$\lim_{x\to\infty} f(x)$$[/math]

God fucking dammit I just want to display the x tends to infty under the limit rather than as a subscript ;__;

testing the text marisa gave me
[math]\lim_{x\to\infty}x= \lim_{t\to 0}\frac{1}{t}[/math]

I figured it out boys, thanks for letting me use your thread, I'll make sure to delete the posts if I still can

>in a deterministic universe, there is no room for free will

I think that it's at the quantum level that we can consider free will to be essentially a "religious" or "spiritual" question, or one which is beyond the scope of scientific knowledge. Deterministic models of the universe which are supported by scientific inference cannot speculate on the conditions at the very beginning of the universe (time = 0) or what created the original conditions of our universe. However, they do a good job describing the details of our life, so that we can say that human "free will" is a consequence of the pattern of the firing of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, and that this pattern is ultimately the consequence of millions of years of evolution, and we can putatively explain the ultimate causes of our behavior back to the first complex animals, and further to the origin of life, and beyond that to the formation of our solar system and galaxy and the Big Bang. In that sense, I agree that there is no room for free will.

As to whether living in a deterministic universe without free will has ethical implications, there is still a strong argument that we should live as though we have free will, since that is what seems to make humans happiest. And we seem to have evolved through this deterministic universe to handle this sort of cognitive dissonance quite well, perhaps further evidence that we "should" live as if we are in control of our actions and responsible for their consequences.

>and quantum mechanics
Fuck off back to highschool.

Too bad that is incorrect, faggot. Tell Marisa she sucks at mathematics.

The limit with t does not even exist so how can it be equal to anything.

Define "free will".

Free will and free thought are myths, you are controlled by the forces that are thrown at you every day whether it's media, your conversations or the nature that whisks by you on your car rides. It all influences what you are thinking, saying and what you plan on doing. You are a control bot, an automated being. Read Memetic Magick by Packwood and you will learn all you want about it. docslide.us/documents/packwood-r-memetic-magic-manipulation-of-the-root-social-matrix-and-the-fabric-of-reality.html

If you were to start over from the moment of the big bang, with all of the variables of the Universe being the same as they were, then all of the particles and matter of the Universe would interact in the exact same way, and thus, everything cause and effect would be the same, therefore no free will. We are literally just observers thrust into a Universe whose outcome has already been determined.

Philosophically, free will is how much our brain values order vs. desire, and what we perceive is the best outcome. If we wish to make a decision, we may. If we decide with order, or if we decide with going against the grain, it all depends on what we deem as acceptable; there are some people who are just hard wired against breaking the rules.
Not really a matter of free will, but an example is I find it very very hard to half ass a challenge. Even if I don't care about it, I will just naturally put effort and thought towards the task.
The biological explanation, it's all brain chemicals.

Define "free will".

Let's experiment. Anyone reply to this, tell me something you hate saying. Some word, phrase, anything you never want to utter out o your mouth.

what the fuck is your point

>Philosophically

Free will "define"

brainlet detected

quantum objects behave randomly, therefor even with the same starting position a different outcome could be possible. read up on m-theory

my point is you were exercising free will by not wanting to say that phrase
Unless that is your phrase
Than it's a case by case basis and we've proved nothing.