The_Dude

If somebody could see the future, wouldnt that negate the concept of free will?

I've had this arguement with religious friends of mine and they think that people are still free to decide their future.

I dont understand this reasoning at all. If anyone (including god and prophets) know what's gonna happen to someone at a certain time/certain date, where is the free will?

__________________
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

Alchoholic Hero

In all honesty, I'm suprised that no one's jumped on this yet.

The free will debate (debacle) is the thorn in the side of every philosopher this side of Plato: the realization that if something is omnipotent, or omnescient, rather, then the premise for free will goes down the drain: if the future can be known to anyone, be they celestial or not, then the free will of man cannot have any place in the scheme of things.

Firstly, the science: quantum theory is currently trying to explain the possibility of both free will and a ...for lack of a better word, divinity...that will let us have our cake and eat it too. The premise is this: particles that compose atoms, and therefore all matter (with the exception of anti-matter, but that's another story), called quarks, act erratic, and are unpredictable by any current laws of science. There exists a theoretical framework that these particles should act under, but, as stated before, they are unpredictable. The implication here, is that the brain is a fundamental organ that is posessed by man (and woman, settle down) that serves as a magnifier for this random behavior, and does so to such an extent that it eventually manifests itself as an actual representation of free will, or the choices that the person to whom the brain belongs actually occur as a result of those choices.

Novel idea, no?

I'd handle the religious implications of this right now, but I want to go home.

__________________
Suicide killed many...

Drink,
and the Devil,
did the rest.

-Hemmingway.

feloniouspunk

The above quantum notion aside (until quantum mechanics and the causal reality that we live in are reconciled), there isn't a good scientific explanation of free will either. Could it be that we just really dislike the notion of not being in charge? I think so. Determinism isn't really as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Like the Oracle said, the decision has already been made. We just have to try to understand it.

And people said the Matrix Reloaded wasn't as philosophical as the first one. Bah to them I say.

32v4c

Did you see donnie darko? It had a somewhat interesting take on the concept.

Anyway, with science showing just how much of our brain is controlled by hormones and chemicals anyway, it looks like most of the time, god or no god, predistination or not, we are not in control.

CSflim

That is precisely why it is impossible to see into the future.

Even if we are to forget momentarily about quantum randomness, the universe is still unpredictable. Even a purely deterministic (non-linear) system is unpredictable.
Take for instance a "spherical pendulum". It is a pendulum free to move in two dimensions, rather than one, and will result in coming to rest being held by one of four magnets.
Take the bob and hold it somewhere. Let it go swinging in motion. Over which of the four magnets will it come to rest? Surely we can calculate this? After all, it is obeying completely deterministic laws which are know to us.
Well chaos theory shows that we cannot hope to predict its future motion, as a slight discrepancy in our initial knowledge of the system will result in huge inaccuracies in our prediction, to the point of our predictions being completely useless.
i.e. making measurements which are 99.999% accurate will NOT result in predictions which are even close to being 99.999% accurate!
What is to stop us (in principle) from knowing the initial state of the system completely (ignoring Heisenberg)? Well it is the fact that to specify the position of a single particle precisely we require an infinite number of decimal places, which of course cannot be used in our equations!

So what was my point? Well, simply that determinism does not equate to predictability even in principle.

And what of Quantum Randomness?
I always cringe when people make the claim that quantum mechanics shows that it is possible for free will to exist. This is rubbish. People often claim that since there is a level of indeterminism inherent in quantum physics that it somehow opens the door for claims of a physical reality to the magical vitalist "consciousness stuff". This is garbage. Anyone who makes claims such as this, imho, simply does not possess as firm a grasp on quantum mechanics as they claim. Now I'm not claiming that quantum effects play no role in the actions of our brain, in fact I would be quite certain that such is the case, rather I am dismissing claims that "quantum randomness" leaves the room for an Aristotelian eidos or soul, that Newtonian determinism did not.

Anyway, sorry for the slight off-topic detour. To answer your original question:
You’re not supposed to understand, only God can understand.

__________________

CSflim

The thing I disliked about Reloaded was that it equated determinism and fate. The two are VERY different things.
Again, off topic...eeerrrkkk!

__________________

Brdd99boy

I can do anything that I will to do
but I can not choose my will

orbital

An unpredictable universe does not imply free will.

Random will, perhaps. But there is no evidence to suggest that it is "free," only that it is determined by a combination of random and complex physical factors.

Johnny Rotten

Imagine a God who knows the result of every possible action, but leaves the choice of action to us, except for certain interventions (like parting the Red Sea, for example). It seems to me that it doesn't have to be free will vs. omniscience. It doesn't have to be one linear future.

The_Dude

but doesnt god know what we are going to choose?

__________________
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

Johnny Rotten

I would imagine he knows what we're most likely to choose, with nth degreee certainty, but nothing ever has a 100% percent chance of happening until it's already happened.

Given this notion, premonition could be explained as knowledge of a divine intervention, or perhaps a subconscious, preternatural glimpse into exactly how an event is going to take place.

A network events converges to create an outcome that the subconscious mind can envision down to the very last detail. Or premonition has something to do with abilities of the human brain that we have not yet grasped.

Look up the CIA's Stargate Program on Google sometime for some interesting reading. It's controlled remote viewing, but it's still very intriguing.

sixate

No, because he's just about as real as the Tooth Fairy and Santa.

Anyway, religious people are hypocrites. They all say they have free will, but when something good happens to them they say that god did it for them and thank him, and when dog... er god, I always confuse the two for some reason, lets something bad happen to them they all say it was his vision and he has bigger plans for them. So all religious people basically say they're puppets and let a mythological creature control their lives........

I sure am glad I'm in full control of my life.

oldman2003

Ok I have a religious back ground. Lots of Christianity, some yoga (10 years plus) and mind altering drug years under my belt. Christian view on freewill (in a nut shell): God is three beings in One thus the Trinity. They (He) have a pure loving relationship and once decided to share it. He tried an experiment. He created a race of beings to share this love but they had to choose. Thus the angles were created. It worked for a while (a few billion earth years). The most beautiful creature He created, observed One (what we call the Son) of the Trinity being worshiped and loved by the angels and in a fraction of a second desired that for himself. Lucifer’s ego was created and he fell from grace. The first record of free will being used for selfish proposes. Gods experiment failed. A few billion years later He decided to do this again and created man to share in this Love relationship. He made man in His Image (not the flesh but the powerful spirit). Again He wanted us to share this love that holds the known universe together but it had to be our choice; Freewill.

I have cursed God over and over through out the years for giving me this freewill and a giant ego. They don’t play together very will. I have freely given back to Him my freewill. Over and over again. Some say the greatest saints were the biggest sinners. I am far from a saint and get tripped up on my sins. The biggest being self imposed ignorance.

Here is what I learned about freewill. It gets you in trouble. It doesn’t get along with the ego. Someday I will find the balance. Then I will no longer be His most unholy son.

Moonduck

I don't see the dichotomy. Let's agree, for the nonce, that there is a hypothetical being capable of peering into the far future. Said being glimpses the future. Let's say that the future is the one actual future, and nothing will alter it. Where does this invalidate the concept of free will? Any possible future, even this single dominant deterministic one, was built on the actions of those exercising their free will.

In essence, simply having a set future does not mean that one does not free will, it simply means that this theoretical being can see the result of that will.

CSflim

if your actions are fixed, then you don't have free will. That is the entire definition of free will.
If we cannot alter our actions, then we don't have free will, we are mere automata with the illusion of having free will.

__________________

MacGnG

the future, being that it hasn't occured yet, can always be changed.

free will is being able to make YOUR own choice, whatever happends in the future hasn't occured yet, and you still can make whatever choice u want when the situation arrises

wlcm

so who's to say the future hasn't occured already? Just because we can't see past our point in time doesn't mean its not there.

i was never a big believer in free will anyways. What is meant to be will be. And you have always been locked into your actions.

Also, is it really that bad if we were required to make the decisions that we would have chosen anyways had we not been locked into them?

John Henry

Sure, Everyone has free will. We just don't have any control over it!

__________________
"No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

ARTelevision

sometimes thoughts are about words only and not about anything else.

a corollary of this is, often, when discussing how things work using words, what is really being discussed is how words work, and nothing more.

a lot of what is called "philosophy" is just this

__________________
create evolution

John Henry

Here here!

__________________
"No one was behaving from very Buddhist motives. Then, thought Pigsy, he was hardly a Buddha, nor was he a monkey. Presently, he was a pig spirit changed into a little girl pretending to be a little boy to be offered to a water monster. It was all very simple to a pig spirit."

hobo

If he can't see the future as it will be, he isn't perfect. But if he can see it, our actions are predetermined and we have no free will.

wlcm

i think tom cruise proved that free will always exists in minority report

blizzak

now that I have read this post, what outcome will this have on what I do tomorrow?
if I didn't choose to get out of bed because I could not get to bed, would I have posted to this topic at all?

I have only been through OAC Philosophy, but I believe the theory of parallel universes is quite relevant when it comes to free will and thus anyone who could see into the future would only be seeing one of the possible outcomes.

__________________
Fueled by oxytocin!

CSflim

who can see into the future? Mystic Meg? Televangilists and their kin? Uri Geller!?

Predicting a future of a different reality that will not be experienced by us is precisely meaningless. If you are indeed to accept the anthropic multiverse principal (not a theory BTW) then predictions from an alternate "reality" are useless. In fact, one could argue that ALL predictions (guesses?) are perfectly precise, SOMEWHERE.

__________________

Moonduck

"if your actions are fixed, then you don't have free will. That is the entire definition of free will. "

Depends on your point of view. If you choose your action, if you weigh your choices on pros vs cons, etc, is that not free will? What matters if there is some deterministic future? If, at any moment, your choices matter little in the big picture, how does that diminish your ability to choose?

You seem to be implying that a set future removes your ability to choose. I say that a set future is the product of many choices. Now, if you add in the corollary of widespread foreknowledge, then you argue a point about a deterministic future devaluing free will. The hypothetical precognitive being will foresee the future and perhaps have a good case for its' free will being hampered, but the rest of humanity? Only if you are willing to argue that there is some being guiding billions of indvidual actors towards a certain set future.

"If we cannot alter our actions, then we don't have free will, we are mere automata with the illusion of having free will."

With such a statement you fall into the epistemological trap of phenomena. If an observer's whole phenomenal perceptive array shows us empirically to have free will, free will is reality for said observer. To say otherwise wanders away from any sort of empirically provable or observable reality into pointless metaphysics.

Honestly, your premise leads to the idea that an artist has no choice as to what she paints simply because the painting will eventually have some form. Look at it from the opposite side and try to prove that the theoretical existence of set future (an idea I find ludicrous), denies free will. How does the knowledge that some act I will make has an eventual outcome devalue my choice to perform said action?

CSflim

Does a computer program have free will? It is an entirely deternministic algorithim. It could be programmed to weigh up pros and cons, giving each a different weighting. It has the ability to "choose" one output over another. Does it have free will? No. Because it's output is determined, even before it is run.

I am saying that if you know your future choice, you don't have to make it... a paradox. The hypothetical being can foresee other peoples choices. Assuming that the being DOES actual act "as he was supposed to" then the others will follow suit.

"Only if you are willing to argue that there is some being guiding billions of indvidual actors towards a certain set future." - I don't see how this follows.

So if you see legless angel bunnies floating around, they too are also "real"? Just because we believe that we have "free will" doesn't not make it real.

From my earlier post I expalined that I do not believe in determinism, either in practice or in principle. BUT, if you were to accept determinism, it would negate free will.

Because it means that you CANNOT choose to perform a different action. If you are only capable of "choosing" a single action, how is that a choice?

__________________

Alchoholic Hero

That's a perception question. What are you considering "real"?


Also, as long as I'm here, CSflim: I was not attempting to throw the quantum theory out as a be-all and end-all of the debate over free will, merely suggesting an option that I had not thought about for a while. Additionally, I was the first to reply, so I didn't have a feel for the forum, yet (I R teh n00b, of course.)

Tertiarily (sp?) What I was suggesting was that the human brain has been designed as a system in which a magnification of the randomness of these particles could provide a basis action that does not (or cannot) be completely predictable.

This means little to me, personally: I'm of the opinion that science is just as full of doubt as any religion: I simply thought that it was a valid answer to the question of free will; or, I wanted to provide a possibility grounded in science before people started breaking out their bibles and their Nietzsche.

edit: I was a jerk, and spelled "Nietzsche" wrong.

__________________
Suicide killed many...

Drink,
and the Devil,
did the rest.

-Hemmingway.

CSflim

I believe that reality is not contingent on our perception of it. I believe that there is in existence an objective reality, which we can, at least in part, experience.
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=21163

I'm not really sure that I follow what you're saying. Nothing is being held against you for being a "n00b". At the heart of philosophy lies debate. Don't take it as a personal attack if I disagree with you.
I assume that you were referring to my post
"I always cringe when people make the claim that quantum mechanics shows that it is possible for free will to exist".
I wasn't actually making direct reference to YOUR post there, rather the general consensus that somehow non-determinism/unpredictability=free will

I feel very strongly that quantum effects do indeed come into play when it comes the brain. But I don't see how this gives rise to free will. If you roll a dice, it cannot be predicted what number you will score. Does the dice therefore have free will?

" I'm of the opinion that science is just as full of doubt as any religion" - well that's your opinion, but I believe few rational people would agree with you. Perhaps you would like to give an example as to why you believe science is so full of doubt?
Granted there are many questions which we cannot yet answer, but we have come a very long way, and now understand much, much more than we did a thousand years ago. I have yet to see a priest harness divine intervention in the construction of a jumbo jet.
If you are going to point to quantum theory as an example of scientists "not having a clue" then I would put it too you that you do not fully understand what is going on. Certainly there is an indeterminacy involved in quantum events, but it is a precisely well defined indeterminacy. For the most part a quantum wavefunction will act in a very deterministic manner as defined by the Schroedinger equation. There is a precisely "calculatable" probability involved when said wave function collapses, when its effects are magnified to the classical level, but that is all.

__________________

MacGnG

what is your opinion on this statement:
"You don't accept that you have free will so you can blame whatever happends on someone else."


i dont really agree with this. it makes one wonder why we wouldn't have free will.

CSflim

that doesn't really make sense, if free will doesn't exist, then who am I to blame "it" on? Whoever it is also doen't have free will.

__________________

MacGnG

God?... "I have no free will so i can blame everything bad that happends on God, because he made me do it so its not my fault"

Moonduck

*sigh* I hate the start of the week. Too busy to keep up with threads here. *grumbles*

Alchoholic Hero

Agreed. Again, though, I would have a tendency to at least connect the two. Barring any unforseen circumstances, if there was a non-determinalistic environment, then wouldn't the actions taken by the subjects in said environment be of their own volition? And ergo, at least partially, free will?


The number that you score cannont be accurately predicted at all times, though the framework of the possibilities can. The difference, however, is that in order for the die to actually make this action possible, it must be acted upon by an outside force. Due to that catalyst, which is the only way that it can make an entrance into that framework, the die cannot be said to have free will as such; only the ability to add a set amount of choices to a certain action.

Heh. Jumbo jet.

I'm sorry. I was pointing out the fact that the theory of evolution, the laws of thermodynamics and gravity, et. al. are not airtight, mostly due to the fact that they were based on a foundation of hypotheses that may or may not have been proven true under all situations. Do they allow for incredible leaps forward in technology and the sciences? Of course. Are they empirically more sound that any type of religious dogma? Perhaps...but only for the physicality of the medium of belief.
This was my opinion, and perhaps I should have left it out of a debate on free will, but I felt like saying it. It relies on this: that your average person (mean/median/etc.) who believes in evolution has about the same amount of knowledge of how that came about as the basic bible-thumper has of Genesis (both of the stories). People tend to rely on "noted scholars", or "eminent physicists" on subjects of incredible importance, when the only point of contact that they have with this physicist is through a newsfilter. This reminded me of the general Catholic spiritual view in which I was raised. Hence, my point (however cluttered and winding). Take it with a grain or so of salt, because it has very little to do with free will.

I never intended to use quantum mechanics to explain that scientists "have no clue;" though I do admit to being less knowledgeable than I would like to be in the quantum field. I understand that the randomness of the quantum particles are random to the extent of said probabalistic framework, and I based my earlier statement on the hypothesis (purely in theory, mind you)that the brain is built to enhance that probabalistic theory ad infinitum, and this may be an actual empiric loophole for the existance of free will.

No beef, man, no beef.

__________________
Suicide killed many...

Drink,
and the Devil,
did the rest.

-Hemmingway.

HeAtHeN

I totally agree with everything you say here.

Remember, if you are good on earth, be nice to everyone and give God money... you go to heaven.

If not you go to a place where you live in eternal pain for the rest of time, in complete agony with no chance of getting away from it all.

But remember... God loves you!!!

Am I the only one who thinks this is a little strange??

__________________

Alchoholic Hero

I'd have to say that blanket statements are not really a good way to go about things when free will is on the table. Firstly, I'd imagine that not everyone who believes in god believes that they have free will...hence the debate. Lutherans (or Calvinists, I always mix them up) are entirely determinalistic in their religious practices: basically, the placement in the afterlife of a man, woman, or child is decided by god before birth, or even conception. This basically invalidates any need to act good or evil, in the general senses of the terms. Hence, their entire life has been mapped out by god before anything happens, so there is no chance of free will.

Also, this: ...is not hypocracy (sp?). More like blind religion. And again, blanket statements rarely, if ever, are true.

__________________
Suicide killed many...

Drink,
and the Devil,
did the rest.

-Hemmingway.

CSflim

I don't believe in God.

__________________

CSflim

Ok, this occured to me, but I preffered to keep it simple, I was actually only using a dice as an analogy, but how about the decay of a radioactive atom. It is spontaneous (without cause) and unpredictible. Does it have free will?



Believing in the theory of evolution by natural selection because "my biology teacher said so" is indeed as ignorant as I believe in Creation becasue "my religeon teacher said so". I agree with that. The fact is that there is hard evidence to back up one of these "theories".
I make a point of never researching only one side of an argument. I have read a few Creation "Science" books, despite scornful looks and "what are you reading that crap for?". I'm reading this crap to make certain that it is indeed crap (Which of course it was).

Again i would agree with you in part. I believe that the brain does indeed harness the powers of quantum physics to aid in its operation, but I fail to see how this would result in free will. Would a quantum computer also have "free will"?

__________________

kw42

If the universe were predictable somehow, lets assume there is a way of calculating things out, then seeing into the future would actually cause the future to change. If you predicted the future based on the current state of events, now you have another factor that goes into the prediction equation: the knowledge of the future you just predicted. It's kind of a paradox I suppose, but it basically makes the future unpredictable.

tarwal

Isn't it plausible that in multiple futures the same event could happen? Like how I can get from Boston to New York in 80 different ways, maybe a single event would still happen no matter what events lead up to it. Sure this means that we're not in control of that event, but we can still be in control of the events leading up to that event.

I know that sounds deterministic (or at least compatibilistic) but I totally have a libertarian view of free will. Couldn't it be that we can freely chose some things but not others? Like how I can move a rock with my hand, but not a mountain.

MacGnG

just because one doesn't believe in God doesn't mean they cant blame everything on a "higher being" or anyone else for that matter

either way that was just an outlandish statement that was made in my presence; i was using it to get a point across.

when people say "we have no free will" to me thats what it is saying.... "i have no free will so i can BLAME everything on someone else"... meaning they do not want to take responsibility for their own actions because "how can they be MY OWN actions if everything was predetermined."