Thoughts on free will vs. determinism

[golFUR]

Your three options make the answer obvious. Ignoring all the incredible amounts of supporting evidence, ignoring the long history of very bright people arriving at the same conclusion:

Your given doesn't work - THERE IS NO GOD

Now take some friggin responsibility for your life, for the terrible condition this world is in, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

You get no replay, no matter how many quarters you earn. There is no Monday morning quarterbacking of your life, there is nothing. Earthworms don't go to heaven, chimpanzees don't go to heaven, neither will you. There is no heaven. There is no god.

[gasgod]

Face it people, he's right.

GG

[purnell]

I'm very comfortable with the idea that there is no "god" in the traditional sense of the word. But I still have faith that my decisions and actions are mine, and not determined externally. Some of your arguments are good, though. It's possible that I have taken a position based solely on irrational belief.

And I'm comfortable with that too.

[BrettK]

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Here's the answer fellas. There is no free will.

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Did you logically come to that decision or is it just some sort of feeling?

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I didn't get an answer, but I'll try to make my point clearer. When a person employs logic, he utilizes the ability to make decisions. If a person says that he has logically arrived at the conclusion that free will doesn't exist, he's really saying that he has come to the decision that decision is impossible. It's contradictory, which makes it self-defeating.

[jason1990]

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

[BrettK]

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

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Are you agreeing with me?

[Triumph36]

That is because our language is that of free will or decision-making. We have no way of speaking as though everything were determined.. a helpful clue that while determinism may be 'true', it is useless.

[BrettK]

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That is because our language is that of free will or decision-making. We have no way of speaking as though everything were determined.. a helpful clue that while determinism may be 'true', it is useless.

[/ QUOTE ]

Support of determinism is logically contradictory. It has nothing to with the English language.

[jason1990]

No. I'm just quoting Rush.

But since I'm now posting something other than a one-liner, I might as well announce my views on the subject.

I feel like free will exists. When I make a choice, it feels like a choice. That is, it feels like I could have chosen something else. It feels like, if I could rewind the clock, I would be able to choose something else, even though all of the circumstances would be the same. In other words, it feels like I have the power to determine the course of certain events, without being entirely constricted by the circumstances of those events.

This power is what I call "free will." So I am saying that, to me, it feels like free will exists. This feeling is strong and serves as empirical evidence for the existence of free will. I have not seen any compelling evidence that suggests this feeling is an illusion. Moreover, if I postulate that this feeling is an illusion, I will be driven to explain the source and workings of this illusion, which would add an unneeded layer of complexity to my world view. So in the absence of compelling evidence, I choose the simpler and more natural explanation, which is that I am feeling something real and that free will exists.

In fact, in the absence of compelling evidence, I can see only one reason to deny the existence of free will: to maintain a world view which is inconsistent with its existence.

[Triumph36]

It's not hard to move oneself out of that circularity: the 'decision' and logical processes employed are nothing more than neurons moving across synapses, etc. Therefore, while I 'think' I've made a 'decision', material in my brain has moved in a certain way so that that is so. Since all material moves in cause and effect relations (quantum events excepted, and even then it may just be because we cannot know those relations), and there is nothing in the universe that we can know except matter, the 'decision' must have been determined.

The difficulty for those who believe in free will is ascertaining exactly what in the brain could possibly act on itself to alter itself in a 'random' way. That is to say, how can free will have a material cause?

By the way, I'm not a believer in either one absolutely. Immanuel Kant proved rather convincingly that both determinism and freedom are true, therefore both are meaningless concepts based on illusions. I just see no advantage to a deterministic account: it takes away morality, the power to learn, etc. and gives us absolutely nothing we couldn't know under a free will explanation.