Zeraph

So the question is, is it still free will if you have no knowledge of the consequences?

I think this question is important, because we often make far reaching decisions in our lives all the time when we really don't know the consequences. Often we think we are making a decision for one thing, when in reality it has very little effect on what we thought would happen.

For instance, when choosing a college, what you really may be choosing is your major, and your future career. I chose mine for some logistical reasons, but because of what they had available, and what that college was known for, it ended up shaping my major. So did I really have the free will to choose my major? Or did circumstance bring it about? And if it did, is it still considered free will?

I've been struggling with this question for years. The short end of it is that yes, I still think it's free will. But it's muddied to all hell, and I'm hoping you'll all help me clear the waters.

filtherton

I don't think free will requires omniscience.

JumpinJesus

Free will only exists if time is linear and there is no such thing as a supreme being or destiny. I don't think we have to be aware of the consequences, though.

__________________
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses

Baraka_Guru

I don't think free will requires knowledge of consequences, nor omniscience. Though I do believe free will is both possible and necessary (in a Christian context at least) under the existence of God.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Zeraph

So most of us agree that we have free will. Though none of us (including me) can give a real reason why it doesn't require omniscience. After all, how can you really choose if you don't know what you're choosing?

filtherton

I don't think it is useful to presume that choices can't exist without omniscience. That isn't to say it isn't valid.

asaris

What makes a choice free really has nothing to do with knowledge of its consequence. What I think has you confused is the connection between a choice's blameworthiness, it's freedom, and the foreseeable consequences. We typically think that the blameworthiness of an act is related to its consequences, and if someone reasonably failed to consider a potential bad consequence which then occurs, we're likely to hold that person less blameworthy. Similarly, if we think that someone was less free in making their choice, we're likely to hold that person less blameworthy. So it's easy to think that the two are related.

But I don't really see any reason to think that they are. An act's freedom arises from whether that act is up to me or not, and this doesn't have much to do with whether we know all the consequences of the act. I might agree that if we are radically mistaken about the consequences, an act might be less free, especially if the mistake arises as a result of an external agency (as in cases of fraud). But most of the time, we have a pretty good idea of the likely consequences, and I don't see why this isn't enough.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

wouldn't knowing the consequences (presumably in advance of an act) preclude free will?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

levite

I think Free Will does not require omniscience, nor does it require either linearity or non-linearity of time. It most certainly does not require the absence of a Supreme Being.

The full freedom of our choices can sometimes be hard to see because of the effects of other people's choices in the world around us, and because we feel constrained by our feelings or beliefs not to make certain choices. So yes, sometimes it can be "muddy." But the Free Will is always there.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

asaris

Why would knowing the consequences of an act preclude free will, rb? I don't really see it.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

roachboy

depends what you mean by free will really. if you want to follow spinoza, the entire idea is a fiction in any event. he says that folk imagine themselves to be free because they're ignorant of what conditions their actions and believe in this quaint fiction called "will"--which he characterizes as an "idea without a referent" or something like that. i think he's right--this is a metaphysical question and not a terribly interesting one at that.

but let's move to a slightly less dismissive place. how do you characterise the situation of those of us who are mired in the social-historical? at the least you'd have to say that we're thoroughly inside history and can only imagine being outside because we have this noun "history" that shapes it's referent as a discrete object of some kind, so following from the notion of discreteness there's an inside and an outside--but we're playing with noun effects, not history here. if being historical means in part that situations are temporally spread out--and they are--and that information is almost inevitably partial and that there's a problem because of time of variables moving around, then it follows that we're in a position of partial information, stuck in a moving threshold space we call the present, conditioning this horizon we call the future based on expectations correlated from the past refracted through whatever mental configuration we drag through this threshold space of the present....so we don't know and cannot know all outcomes of any given action and so, to wax existentialist for a sec (ew...) we gamble, we play the probabilities--and that's the best we can do. "free will" is a quaint way of denoting playing probabilities.

so were situations transparent, there'd be no question about playing probabilities as to outcomes--there'd be a manifold presumably, and you, the god-spectator could theoretically choose between them. the choice is an aesthetic affair i suppose.

either way, it seems pretty obvious that if there is an equivalence between being conditioned by the social-historical and playing probabilities as to outcomes of actions and "free will" and choosing between possibilities present in a manifold, that the equivalence relies on the fact that we call them the same thing.

but really, i'm more with spinoza on this.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dolphinio55

Free will and destiny are the same thing. An infinite (or at least, extremely long and infinitely complex) chain of events leads to every action, decision or other phenomenon which occurs. Only that which does happen can happen. We are all entirely products of our environments, a category which includes our own brain and body and - for want of a better word - nature. I don't think omniscience has bearing on free will, since free will is an invented concept used for the sake of convenience.
Then again, this is not to take into account quantum physics.
Sorry, went on a bit long there.

CoachAlan

I take as one of my premises that we are a part of the Universe, rather than existing outside it somehow. With that in mind...

It seems to me that way the Universe behaves must be either deterministic or random. The more we learn, the more deterministic the Universe appears to be. Where once the wandering of planets across the night sky seemed random, now we know it to be deterministic. So it is with the processes within our brains. We are learning more about which chemicals do what, and how the whole thing works together allowing us to think. So what once appeared as randomness in our thoughts or actions (the "free" in free will), now appears more deterministic.

In point of fact, our thoughts, actions, feelings, etc., seem to be controlled by chemical reactions inside our brains. These reactions, by their nature, are deterministic, even if they are too complex to be predictable. Technically, I think that makes them Chaotic, but I digress. In my view, the Universe is deterministic, and, as part of the Universe, everything that makes us what we are is part of a deterministic system. Hence, there is no free will. There may be "will," but it is not free.

The other side of the coin, of course, is that there is randomness in the Universe, and it is from this randomness that the otherwise deterministic processes in our brains are foiled. I would posit, however, that if our thoughts, actions, feelings, etc., are part of a random system, that still does not equate to freedom. Furthermore, if they are random, they shouldn't even rightly be called "will."

__________________
"If I cannot smoke cigars in heaven, I shall not go!"
- Mark Twain

Cynosure

Everybody – even kids – knows that smoking cigarettes is bad for you, and that it's addictive. Yet as a teenager, most of us are presented with a cigarette by one of our peers, and we... choose either to smoke it, or not to. Isn't that free will?

Sure, it's seductive for a teenager to smoke that first cigarette, and your peers can be pretty damn coercive. But you still have free will in the matter. Many of us (most of us?) choose not to smoke cigarettes, despite all the temptation and coercion.



So, what conditioned you to choose to subscribe to Spinoza's cynical and belittling view about free will?

roachboy

i don't see anything cynical about it. i think it's a pretty interesting account of how socially embedded agency operates--as highly constrained, but as tending to see through constraints rather than think recursively about them. and he's right about the consequences of this. this is not to say there's no agency--but there's no connection, logical or otherwise, between that and the theological notion of "free will."

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Plan9

Isn't the entire notion of god essentially the original home monitoring bracelet for people who approached the borders of the Free Will discussion?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Cynosure

I say "cynical" because Spinoza's (and your) view of human free will seeks to break it down to its most base elements, thereby making it inconsequential and even nonexistent. The word "cynical" implies a low opinion of humanity as well as a disbelief in the sincerity and worthiness of human motives. And what is more cynical, what is more lowly thinking about humanity, than believing that one of the greatest – if not the greatest – qualities of human beings, i.e. free will, is actually an illusion, a fallacy?

Next you'll be telling us "love" is just a chemical reaction in the brain.

FelixP

Free will exists in NOT knowing what will happen. If we knew our own respective fates, then we would have no choice but to obey them. Try reading up a bit on compatabilism, sometimes referred to as soft determinism.

__________________
Free will lies not in the ability to craft your own fate, but in not knowing what your fate is. --Me

"I have just returned from visting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world." --Douglas MacArthur

Plan9

Hell, Roachboy doesn't have to tell you that "love = chemical reaction" bit, I'll cop to it first and top it with a cheesy story about '06.

...

Perhaps free will is as Roachboy mentioned: "a quaint way of denoting playing probabilities"

This quote always comes to me when I think about free will and that kinda philosophical marshmallow landmine:

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

roachboy

cynosure--you seem to be one of those people who imagines that for human beings to be able to do anything beyond crawl about the ooze of perdition or whatever that they have to be able to see themselves in Lofty Terms, so free will and the soul and the Grand Drama of Really Important Stuff like Agape and related Big Loves.

but think about it. if will refers to anything, it is to your capacity to act on situations. you act on situations continually, every day. that you are reading this is a series of actions; that you are disgreeing with it a related series. how much of either process are you aware of? saying that your actions are constrained is simply to open a way to account for everyday life---it also spills into the impossibility to a total account simply demonstrates that total transparency is an illusion. to think that complete transparency was possible, you'd have to imagine that the self--the subject--and the world are entirely separate one from the other. this separation is a function of a doctrine of the soul--it has nothing to do with how human beings are. it also points to another basic fact, which is that knowing how actions are conditioned is a Problem. and that, if spinoza is right, freedom is a Problem, not a state.

what does this change really about experience? mostly the ways in which you'd imagine you could account for it, and from there the type of understanding that would provide such an account. i happen to think that most philosophical questions are also political questions as the constraints that shape how people act are socially instituted. this gives direction to the ways in which i might process particular questions, where i might appeal to for explanation or the way in which i might imagine that things, and ourselves, could be otherwise through fundamental political transformation.

but experience itself?
to say that love is a chemical reaction, for example, is a really simplistic statement. it presupposes that a human being is a thing, that the brain is a machine, that result x is a simple function of chemical releases and combinations. this seems to me the christian notion of human being stood on its head: where before you had the Soul and Body, now erasing the Soul leaves you with a meat puppet, and you have to see the meat puppet as nothing other than a hunk of meat--so an object. i don't buy it.

so can say that at some dimension love is a chemical thing. but it's also a function of the neural substructures that enable empathy it's a function of the capacity to generate and vary projections and symbols in the imagination. it's a function of the capacity to project oneself beyond the confines of one's meat palace. it's the way all these intertwine with the modes of being of another. it's also many many different states, many different types of relations, all crushed together because you call them one thing, use one word.

i can say all that quickly and still not really know what love is--what's easier to know is just that i'm pleased when it take shape and not so much when it dissolves.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

asaris

Actually, I think this is demonstrably false. Free will means at base that our actions are up to us, right? If that's right, then for something to interfere with free will, it has to interfere with the extent to which the action is up to us. But knowing what an outcome will be does not influence the causes of that event.

Let's say, by hypothesis, that I know who will win the Yankees game tomorrow. This seems possible; at least logically possible, if not actually possible. But it seems odd to say the least that I, living in DC, have any effect on the outcome of that game. Why is this? Simply put, knowledge is not causation. Similarly, simply by knowing what I will do or what someone else will do tomorrow, I do not exert any causality over that decision, and so there is no interference with their free will.

__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Cynosure

I certainly wouldn't put it in those words, but, yes, I do think along those lines.

Basically, I believe that the human race – that all life on this planet, really – is ultimately screwed, without some higher power to guide us.

So, there!

Well, it depends. Are we talking about daily, little decisions like what I'm going to eat for dinner? Or what clothes I'm going to wear, today? Or what movies do I want to put into my NetFlix queue? Or are we talking about major, pivotal decisions like what career am I going to pursue? And who am I going to marry? And whether or not I'm going to believe in God; and if I do believe, then what religion I'm going to follow?

And yet you seem to believe that "free will" is a fallacy, an illusion.

I suppose the difference here is that you find the notion of "love" useful in your life. For you, "love" is emotionally (if not intellectually) satisfying and even productive,. But the notion of "free will", you find to be useless and without merit. (But of course you find "love" and "free will" to be this way, for you have chosen to be entirely carnal-minded.)

Whatever. According to your worldview, both "love" and "free will", when boiled down, are both the same: chemical reactions in the brain.

roachboy

cynosure: why would you impute a position to me that i explicitly reject in the post you quote?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Cynosure

Did you reject it? Not according to what I read. (Then again, you and I do seem to be fundamentally on different wavelength, here. Not only that, but I find myself having to re-read your sentences for their meaning, such is your idiosyncratic use of wordage and punctuation.)

roachboy

maybe that'll help.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

tiger777

It all really depends on how you define the word free will. In one sense we don't have free will because all of our actions are usually predetermined. In other words how we react in certain situations are a sum of our genetics (chemicals) and past experiences (information). Basically all of our choices come down to our tendencies which react to the probabilities of external conditions. See we can't control the external conditions we can only react to them.

Let's assume for a second that if we had perfect information and could account for the trillions upon trillions of variables in all given situations we could foresee the outcome of everything. In other words we would know everything would free will still exist? I would argue that it wouid not because of the fact that everything would be predetermined. You could say well if you knew what would happen then you could change it, but even the change you made could be predicted beforehand when taking into account you knew what would happen. So in this case you really don't have a choice because think of it like watching a movie, if you watch the movie no matter how many times you watch it the same things happen. And if you could watch and rewatch your life, that's exactly how it would look given this scenario. No matter how many times you watched it, you would always do the same thing. This is assuming of course all of the variables were the same in other words. For example if you think back to yesterday if you went back in time and had the same state of mind at the time and all of the variables remained the same, you would make the exact same decisions as you did the first time. So free will seems like an illusion to me.

The closest thing that makes sense to free will to me in the traditional definition of the meaning would be our ability to alter our tendencies. The way I see it is, there are billions of cells in our body doing things for us, they all have a job and there are various functions of the brain that all have jobs too and control many things. I see consciousness as basically our 1 job. This is the part of the brain we're assigned to and it allows us to sort of oversee things. Imagine if we were a president so there's all of those branches that make orders etc and vote on things, but at the end of the date we can either accept it or veto it. See for example let's that we are addicted to smoking and we want to quit. Well all of our tendencies point to us continuing to smoke, excluding developing like cancer or something like that, or some other deadly harmful health problem, we always have the choice to stop without a sudden external condition pressuring us to do so. Although of course if we didn't know the studies about how it was harmful we would likely never stop because we are addicted and enjoy it, so even that is contingent upon information which was part of your other question about understanding the consequences.

But really I think the more I think about it, free will is just an illusion. It's the illusion that we can choose to do anything at any time. sure I could take that pen on my desk and stab my eye, but choosing to do so could be predicted by the fact that I purposely did so for the sake of doing something I felt would be unpredictable in which case would be free will the opposite of destiny or prediction. So I mean a rat will keep administering opiates and such because it gets addicted and what not, it's just doing what it's program has written for it, but it doesn't self-administer stuff like alcohol to my knowledge. Because it's body tells it no. Yet we still will drink alcohol even though we can tell it's poision and we want to puke, this is because our brains are so much more complex, we have the choice to drink it, so I mean the illusion of free will, is this extra awareness, and intelligence we have. We are basically a super complex program, we have the ability to imagine anything and everything that is in our brain, we basically have a virtual simulator in there, we can conceptual so many great things. Basically it's these higher abilities that I feel have given us the idea of free will. So Through this long winded ramble I think I went through my opinion that free will doesn't exist whether or not we know the outcome.

Anyhow I guess I have rambled enough for now. As for your major changing, well that shows how important information is. See if you had done more research and found out that they didn't have the program you wanted for the major you wanted to pursue you could've then made a more educated decision about your future. Not doing the research however basically threw more variables into the equation to shape your future without your knowing. This isn't necessarily bad, but it can be if you really want to accomplish something, but then get strayed away from it because of unforeseen circumstances that you could've circumnavigated.

ametc

We have free will whether we like it or not. Unless a parasite takes your brain over.

Cynosure

That brings to mind a twist on this discussion: If you're born severely retarded, or if you suffer severe brain damage, but in either case you're still able to function as an active (if not productive) human being, do you still have free will?

roachboy

we have agency.
that's as far as it goes.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ametc

To some extent, a person has enough freewill to create their own opinions.. but probably not enough to control what their body does.


While working for a dementia unit as a pallative care and skilled nursing facility, I had to deal with Alzheimer's patients hitting me every day. I've even been punched in the face. But, I knew that their decisions were guided by misconceptions. So, while they still had freewill, they weren't in the right state of mind to use it as they truly wanted.

As long as our brain still functions by itself to some degree..we still have some amount of freewill. We just might not realize what we're doing with our freewill, I guess.

roachboy

how is free will here not just a synonym for agency?

it's strange that sometimes in philo threads you see folk getting annoyed about sematics because, in the end, that's really what almost all western philosophy is concerned with....anyway so here the question comes up again:

what exactly is meant here by free will?

it might be useful to fashion another statement about it rather than bounce back to the earlier statement

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite