111–120 of 265 posts
No matter where the choice to act rests, it's not with the individual willing it to be so.
In a western society, with ample choice and the ability to make those choices, one might feel like they have free will. Look elsewhere, and you'll see that the "choice" to act is very limited to the circumstances of your life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If free will exists, that would seem to imply that people can make decisions that affect their future. Wouldn't free will therefore imply nondeterminism? Not necessarily. "Free will" is being able to express your actual self (your will) in a decision. But if on a matter that calls for A or B decision, you can make either A or B, then "you" are not a coherent thing (because you can go multiple ways. Wouldn't a perso…
If that is so, then free will is a redundant concept (the outcome is actually determined without it), and the question becomes one of why do we feel we have, and are exercising, a choice between A and B. As it happens, I am pretty sure that I am not a coherent thing - or, at least, I would not rule out a putative explanation on the grounds that it would imply that I am not a coherent thing.
Perhaps there's no choice, but there's an examination/consideration of the alternatives. We mistake this examination as a choice process, even though we only have one choice (the one we end up making).
Ah, the age old question where it doesn't matter if the answer is positive or negative at all. Since it is opinion time: I do think that we posses free will whatever the definition might be. There are enough know non-deterministic processes. I also think consideration of randomness vs determinism isn't sufficient to find an answer.
> Of course, randomness isn’t the only thing necessary for free will Not only that, but randomness and determinism are equally against the (casual) idea of free will. Free will, as commonly understood, means there's an "extra layer of abstraction" between the universe (material objects and their relationships) and me. What people called "soul". It's not just that our decisions (will) are random instead of predetermin…
> Not only that, but randomness and determinism are equally against the (casual) idea of free will. I'm not sure that I'd agree. Maybe the layman doesn't think about how to reconcile determinism with their concept of free will, but it is possible. Talking about free will without a working definition is hard. If free will is: " You are free to make any choices presented to you." Then it becomes simple to argue that yo…
I made the same argument in my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18607762
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If there's no free will obviously not -- since any crime decision is predetermined upon the earlier states of the universe (even before we appeared on Earth), and any drop in crime in correlation with a "commitment to punish certain behavior" is just correlation itself, and not causation (both things being caused by those earlier states). An asteroid hitting Earth is predetermined by early stages of universe too. I…
> No need for the free will at all. You're mistaken. Free will is needed to identify who the criminal is in any given situation, ie. who are the morally responsible parties. You can't escape that with the arguments you presented, and you just skipped it to talk about justice, which is a whole separate matter.
Belief in free will is required (in most common ethical systems at least - there were whole religions believing in deterministic salvation, where God made people who will sin and can't do anything about it - and people carried on, punishing crimes as usual :) - instead of striving to be good to deserve the salvation people were supposed to strive to be good to prove they are these that will be saved).
Existence of free will isn't.
In universe without free will there can be people who believe in free will and "decide" who is criminal based on that. It's their brains causing them to do so, but in reality neither they, nor the criminals make any decisions - it's all predetermined. But everything still works the same way, and their consciousnesses feel in control.
BTW even the common moral systems doesn't always care about responsibility - for example if you steal because you're a drug addict - nobody searches for the first guy that gave you the drugs and got you addicted. It's assumed it's impossible to find, and to keep society functioning they put you in jail (even if you had no choice).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If there's no free will obviously not -- since any crime decision is predetermined upon the earlier states of the universe (even before we appeared on Earth), and any drop in crime in correlation with a "commitment to punish certain behavior" is just correlation itself, and not causation (both things being caused by those earlier states). An asteroid hitting Earth is predetermined by early stages of universe too. I…
> No need for the free will at all. You're mistaken. Free will is needed to identify who the criminal is in any given situation, ie. who are the morally responsible parties. You can't escape that with the arguments you presented, and you just skipped it to talk about justice, which is a whole separate matter.
No. Causality is all you need to identify who the criminal is.
Physical stimuli are basically all we need as intelligent beings to come to a conclusion about things we don't like happening to us, and thus ultimately make into moral laws or codified ones. These are the inputs, these are the causes. Then, once enough human beings have had those inputs result in a large enough collective coming to the conclusion that stuff is Bad, we end up with laws.
Then, whenever someone acts in a way that we have determined is Bad, they are the criminal. They do not need to possess free will for the rational thing to do to be to provide punishment for them, because punishing them ultimately changes the inputs used by others to reach decisions. Nothing about this requires free will - it's all just as applicable if you just believe the laws of physics and causality determine every choice we make.
A different view: if we live in a universe that branches into multiple universe at every $PLANCK_TIME, then free will could be our consciousness choosing the branch it follows without actually interacting with the universe.
Love this! As if God designed universe timeline to be immutable. The question is, by making choice B you get universe B unique to that branch you chose, but is it a new branch per person per choice? Or do multiple people get “switched” to that branch?
If the universe is considered a set of individuals or object, then it's unclear whether a multiple paths could lead to equivalent universes or the same. It all depends on the category theory (is the composition of choices associative, etc).
That being said, I really don't like multiple/branching universes theories.
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> A universe lacking free will would lack these qualities Why?
Because free will merely requires the ability to understand the choices we're making and learn from them, like I said.
I've always thought of free will as an absurdity. Here's my thought process: If I make a decision, there's 2 possibilities: 1. The decision is based upon prior information and states, therefore there is a deterministic causality 2. The decision is not based upon prior causality: E.g. I have a "soul" and that's what decides. However, if we look into 2, we arrive at the same problem: 1. Either the souls decision is det…
But it's also a self centered definition, because I think a being with vast computational power and perfect knowledge of the current state of a chaotic system might not see it as free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not only that, but randomness and determinism are equally against the (casual) idea of free will. I'm not sure that I'd agree. Maybe the layman doesn't think about how to reconcile determinism with their concept of free will, but it is possible. Talking about free will without a working definition is hard. If free will is: " You are free to make any choices presented to you." Then it becomes simple to argue that yo…
I'd define free will as used by the average person to mean the ability to make decisions that are based at least in part on something other than your makeup and environment.