Free will
 

Is there such thing as free will. I don't believe so, but I think life is set up in such away that it doesn't mater. The illusion is just as satisfying, not that I have experienced free will. I'm sure someone else on here believes that we have no free will, and I'm sure they can argue why better than I can, so I'll let that happen.

I just sat here for about a minute and wondered if I was destined to reply to this thread, or whether I had a choice. Once I have all this typed I will either delete it or post it.

"Those who deny contingency should be tortured until they admit it is possible for them not to be tortured." (Duns Scotus)

It's obvious we have free will. We all make choices; I mean, the only thing more obvious than this is the existence of the external world. How we make choices, whether we make choices abitrarily between opposites or our nature 'determines' us to make certain choices -- that's the question. In other words, the question is not whether or not we have free will, but what it means to have free will.

You are your own existence. Therefore, free will exists if you assume you are in charge of you.

^ so you have free will to excercise free will
:)

Actually we have free will, wether or not we can choose what to do with it, is the question.

I believe that ultimately we do not have an arbitrary choice. The neurons in our brains decide what we do, and what they decide is the end result of genetics and envrironmental experiences. We 'decide' using a sophisticated network of electronic signals. There is no choice, no soul in that.

Like the original poster says: we live in the illusion of having a 'soul' that chooses our actions, but in the end, its pure (albeit very very very complicated) physics.

This is my opinion (duh), but it has been reinforced by reading (not quite done yet) The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
(a good book as an introduction into the theory of evolution)

Ok, imagine this.
God is not a BEing, persay. Within our minds we think "being" as in some form.
This BE-ing we call God, does exist, but not how its been defined or perceieved. Yes, this "God" is a BEing, it is JUST BE-ing. What BEing can just BE? And always was and always will BE and will never ceise to exist, no matter what we do?
The "Source of All Things"=Energy. It surrounds and binds everything in existance. It comes in infinite forms. Enough force of energy creates motion, even matter.

Okay, enough of that. This energy does not consist of good and bad, it's just energy, pure and simple energy. But it is how we use it that controls how the energy reacts. Why wouldn't we then have free will to choose? This energy is no higher of a BEing than we are, and we all have it, we all use it- every day, every second. It's a matter of how we use it. We all make different choices. If we are to make a choice that creates a "negative" friction with Energy, it will seem like a bad choice, or a even that whatever consequence happens, we may deny that we had no part in it, that it just happened to us. Negative energy connects with negative energy, positive energy connects with positive energy. That's a relative way of describing it. Energy is really just energy, but we bring out and define "positive" and "negative", neither of which are better than the other, but as you would notice- if you were to make the choice out of Love or Fear, youw ould notice the contrasting difference. And we act out of and choose out of Love, the energy then reacts as "positive", seeming to make us feel "good" and seeming to naturally flow. If we act out of Fear, the only thing opposite of Love, the energy reacts in a "negative" manner, seeming to clash with one another.
Think of it as ripples- are you creating "positive" ripples out of Love, or "negative" ripples out of fear. Fear connects to Fear, Love connects to Love.
But this stems all from the freedom of choice. The Energy we are from, the energy that we also create, stems from a pure essence of existance, with no contrasting or conflicting parts. WE, the people, create the contrasting or conflicting parts that make this world keep spinning. To make us keep living. We work, we question, we fight, we wonder, we fear........even we all stopped doing all of that, we wouldn't exist, therefore there would be no reason for the Energy to exist either.
Oh, boy, I feel like I'm rambling, it may not make sense, but it comes down to this. Energy creates matter. Matter meaning US. We have thoughts. Thoughts are pure energy. We act upon, or put those thoughts into motion, creating more matter. And, thus we keep going and evolving, living from day to day.
With each choice we make from these thoughts, creating an action we take, will always have an outcome. Now, the outome is where the effect of our choices comes through. We can choose to observe it as an experience that we chose and for us to learn more of who we are, or we can ignore it or blame an outside source for the outcome. We all choose everything we do and experience in life. If you look at it in a detailed map, you would notice the trend (thoughts, actions, creation, outcomes). But there are no coinsidences, no accidents, no fate. It all happens for a reason, and we are the reason. It's nothing to be angry about, upset about, or confused by. All things happen perfectly, even though its hard to fathom. Therefore, there is no punishment, condemnation, or a burning pit of hell we will roast in if we make a bad choice, because there IS no bad choice. There is only choice.

Check out Wayne Dyer, he puts it in such a beautiful, simple way.

If we are energy how do we influence what the energy does? Doesn't it just move and react with other energy on it's own?

:::OshnSoul:::,

I fail to see how a universe, which is all one being and ourselves being part of that universe, gives us free will. Wouldn’t we be just cogs in the machine? I realize that there is no right or wrong choice, that it is all subjective, yet how did we end up with that subjectivity? What makes us decide that murder is wrong? Certainly it is not a natural tendency in the universe, it is a social and biological construct. Neither of which we have any power over.

We make the choices, but are the choices ours? To me it seems like the choice belongs to the universe and since we are part of that universe it is in a sense our own. So I can’t make an independent choice, free from causality but if you think about it, if we could make such a choice it would be completely empty of all meaning.

noahfor:
we influence the energy by the choices we make. The thoughts we have. The actions we take. All of that is usage of energy. WE put it into motion. There is only ONE energy, but it's how we use it that creates it to react a certain way. We can either see that energy as being perfect and everywhere, for our free will to use- with respecting it and knowing what and all it can do....
OR we can abuse, deny, or try to manipulate the energy, which can cause it to fluxuate with extreme reactions, such as "things not going our way", "bad luck", or arguments, fights, death and destruction, etc. But what we choose has a purpose- and a message for us. The experiences we have are all that we create out of how we use the energy.

Mantus:
Relative terms are man-created to help define events, actions, thoughts, or words through simple, individual opinion, basically.
We create the world around us the experiences we have. The choices we make are infinite and free- We are the cause. Not that we're to blame, because the will of our choices are free and every experience has a reason. We will never fail, but we can change. The larger the group consciousness is about something (i.e. fearing terrorism OR stopping descrimination), the more powerful the outcome of that. We control what happens in this world. Indivdually and as a Whole.
No choice is empty of meaning, sometimes some choices and even outcomes of choices are harder to see the meaning or reason, but it's always there.
Let's take a look at a few instances:
a) the gay-marriage activists who gathered in consciousness to make possible the legalility of those gay marriages in some states now.
b) Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks for standing up against descrimination against blacks. Look at us now. We still have the KKK and "skinheads", but we are not all seperated anymore, thanks to people like them.
c) The combined consciousness of fear and vulnerability we created in order for the 9-11 attacks to occor. Those incidents were not out of our hands, yet we let them slide right through.
d) Adam and Eve, first man and first woman of the human experience who brought relativity into the human experience, by making what we call a "wrong" choice, but showing that they could make any choice at all. It was simply a first blessing, not original sin. If they didn't make that choice, we would all be acting as "cogs in the machine", as you say.....but we don't. We all act, choose, and "ARE" different. For a reason. To keep the truth living that we can make any choices we want, but there are reaction, effects, and consequences to each choice we make. And in each reaction, effect, and consequence is a new beginning and a reason.


It blows me away how magnificent life works and how I really am in control of it. Start looking at the energy and how you can use it. In every situation you encounter. In everything you think and say and do. Think about it before you do it and see the possible effects/consequences and in that you will see how the energy will be used. You will see that there is more than one option, therefore giving you "choices". You have the choice to make any choice you wish. That you are in control of moving that energy. You create the ripples. What ripples will you create?

:::OshnSoul:::,

We are the cause but we are also the effect. The choices of the present are based on the choices of the past.

All the examples you mentioned. Those people made a choice to overcome, but that choice would have never been there if it wasn’t for the fact that those people were brought into a world that put them in the position to have to overcome. One must ask as Martin Luther King, Jr. a product of his choices or a product of all the choices made before him?

That is the crux of it isn’t it. Are we really free to choose our paths or are we just being pushed along by a wave of causality?

Mantus, what is your age? Just curious.

23, noahfor

Don't let the terrible grammar and spelling fool ya :p

Yes, I agree. You have pointed out a rather true, yet seemingly conflicting idea.
That goes to show that EVERY PERSON contributes to the shape and state of this world, humanity, and life. And it also goes to show that EVERY PERSON has the free will to do so and that the free will can be as powerful and strong as we make it to be.
We all create ripples (as I've previously said). I find this to be the most beautiful way of putting it when it comes to choices (cause & effect). Every person creates ripples in life- within themselves, as also in their job, their social life, their family, etc. That creates the waves that can affect others that they know or that come onto their path. Now, this is where the "others" have the free will to choose how they are affected by those ripples.
We are not in control of other people's ripples, only our own. Yet, we are all connected and that all things happen for a reason. Not one event occurs that is against our Soul's will.
Think of your life, and if you were to exit the human life right now, what ripples do you observe that you have created? Are you happy with those ripples? Or do you wish to change the pattern, consistancy, and/or energy of the ripples? It's all up to you. It's what you choose.

It is hard to believe in freewill due to causality, though I like to keep the illusion going to myself in order to keep personal accountability for everyone else.

:::OshnSoul:::,

You talk of the future. Creating ripples to influence future events. But why do we make the choice to create ripples in the first place? Is that choice free?

Previous actions (our own or of others) dictate our present actions. These influences go way back to the time of our birth. Yet from the start our very first effect on this world is not our choice. And from that moment the ripples of causality begin to shape what we are. Our fight thoughts, our fight words, our fight action are all influenced by the actions of our parents and those around us. Our whole universal image is built upon the foundation that our parents have built for us.

That unique inter world which we all hold so dear is not all our own, it was built by society, it was built by circumstance. The eyes and thoughts that help us judge our experience are trained by the currents of causality that we encountered during our lives.

What I am trying to communicate here is that our choices, not our actions, but our choices are limited by events of the past. I am saying that you have the freedom do whatever you want but what you want is determined. Thus if we have but one path to walk are we really free?

I find that the more ignorant of the world we are, the more we believe that there is no free will. At first glance, I am here, and you are there. Everything in the world is predecided because it is possible to know everything about everything all at once, and if you know that and all the laws that govern them, then you can know where they will be 1 second, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, 1 decade, and 1 century from now. You can know what decisions you will make and what affect they will have. You can know how you will live and how you will die. This, however, is entirely inaccurate.

Modern advancements in physics (which, sadly, the majority of students do not learn!), show us that choice is an integral part of the universe. If you know exactly where I am, you cannot know how fast I am going. If you know exactly how fast I am going, you cannot know where I am. If you know how much energy I've gained, you cannot know the length of time it took to gain it. You can even cheat the conservation of energy, as long as you give the energy back before anyone notices.

A particle chooses to be the way it is - its location, its velocity, and its state - purly by the probability of it being there. There are "waves" of probability affect everything in the universe, including our lives. Our lives are made up of chance, and cannot be predicted. There's one thought experiment where you see what a running jaguar would look like if a constant in the universe were much, much higher. It would be a blur! You would not know where it was by inches in all directions. So, the affect surely much less noticable, but it is certaintly all around us.

So, in a sense, we do have free choice. If a choice is not predictable by anyone, including yourself, is it not free?

Free will does exsist -- proof:
I am beat and molested as a child and grow up to be a doctor -- overcoming the odds and raising myself "above" my environment.
I am beat and molested as a child and grow up to be a criminal -- blaming my childhood for my actions.

For every action there is a reaction -- how we react, however, is up to us.

sexymama-
I know it's hard to comprehend and fathom,
but the most cruel and hurtful things done "to" us, are actually things that
a) our Souls call upon to experience. Not as a punishment of any sort, but the only way for us to evolve is to experience things that "we are not". Most everyone, not necessarily all, but most, actually grow and gain from the experience. As painful as it may be, not that I would wish any harm on anyone or myself, the realization of who we are becomes much more clearer and stronger afterwards.
b) We will it into reality by the choices we make. We choose to walk alone at night or have a blind date or park in a certain spot or simply being in the "wrong" place at the "wrong time" (using the word "wrong" as a relative term, here, because ultimately there is no wrong). The hardest thing to understand is the child's hurtful experience. Especially when it happens to someone as a child which will have a "scar" on them for the rest of their life and as a child, they don't necessarily know how to handle the pain and aftermath. That's still difficult to explain, but in all truth, as they grow older they have the choice of getting over that pain. Some do, some don't. But the Soul chose to experience the pain for a reason, but that reason cannot usually be seen until down the road, whether it be a few months or many years. There is growth in every experience, yet the "worst" experiences are always the brighter beginnings and new awakenings. They always strengthen the person one way or another, that's how we evolve. We can't evolve if we don't experience what we're not and the human experience wouldn't exist if we had no reason. This is the reason- to evolve and realize who we are through experiences of who we are not.

OshnSoul -- I think I understand the point you're trying to make; bad things happen to us so that we can grow from them. I'm not sure what you mean by 'our souls will them', but I don't think that affects the point I'm about to make.

I think that evil is bad. There are things that happen which are not justified by any good that might possibly come out of them. I think that the denial of this is the sign of a weak soul that needs to believe that, somehow, everything has a meaning, where the strong soul realizes that the world is just an evil place, and so evil happens. I think it trivializes the evil that befalls people to believe that it happens as a 'growing experience'. Evil is here, and its real, and I don't think you need to be a Christian to see it.

And this is precisely why I'm a Christian -- because I believe in the reality of evil. The only way I can stand evil, stand against evil, is because I know there is a Good Person who is much stronger than it. He, and far too rarely Him working though me, makes good out of the evil. This doesn't justify evil, doesn't give it a meaning, or anything trite like that, but it's the only way to make things even a little bit better. I have faith in a God that will make all things new, create a new world where there will be no 'growing experiences'. This is the center of my faith, that though there is evil and pain in this world, there is also a God. Not a God who is some mysterious energy force or some entity blind to our sufferings, but a God who walked with us, who knows all the suffering that we suffer, and so a God who suffers with us.

I think we agree 100% OshnSoul. I am not saying that bad things happen to us, thus taking away our free will. I am saying, how we react to those bad things demonstrates our free will. I can choose to learn and grow from an experience or I can choose to use it as an excuse for my current actions. Either way, I have free will.

It has been my experinece that every trial I've experienced in life has taught me much more than a simple, easy life would offer. I don't look forward to the trials -- but I'm grateful for the growth.

Of course you don't have to be a Christian to see it, yet you are a Christian who sees it. That I agree with. A Christian is a definition of a certain belief, but people can still believe the same thing as you, yet not be called a Christian. It's just a label, a category.

Evil is a creation of Man designed to classify that which is not Who We Are, that which is not what we believe is right and good.
It is like defining cold water and hot water, for instance. But the cold and the hot come from the same source, water. It is just different polarities.
I grew up in a Christian church, yet the whole time couldn't understand the things that were contradiciting in the belief. I am not against Christianity, nor any religion for that matter, because all religions have Truth. And God can be realized in every path.
But I felt that how could there be another Source existing that was not what the world is, what God is (everything), what I am.
Evil is simply the choices and actions made in which people find offensive, wrong, and against their beliefs. Yet, we've been given the gift of Free Will. If we have this Free Will, why would we be punished or judged by an all-loving Source that gave us Unconditional Love and Free Will and that if we did something against God's Will (our Free Will???) that we would be sent to an eternal place of Hell. I don't believe in a physical existance of a Heaven or Hell, but a state of mind- what we create in our minds as to what we experience and perceive.
I am not stepping on your Truth, I respect yours with all my heart. That is Who You Are. That defines you.
This is my Truth. There is "God"- The Source that runs through all things. This source has no preference to our existance and our choices that we make, that is defined as being given Free Will. This Source is of Love, without restrictions, rules, or judgement (Unconditional Love). And that Love Is All There Is, Ultimately. Yet make choices toward or against Love. No choice better or worse, evil or good, that we make, but that there are infinite choices- and out of those are "high" choices, made from Love, and "other" (not lower) choices, made against Love, or out of Fear. That is the human polarity to Love. Any choice made is either made out of Love or Fear.
That I am created by this Source, just like everyone and everything else in existance, but choices made by us (humanity as a whole or individually) can create what seems to be "evil". It can affect the world around us, either in a positive way or negative way. But that doesn't make it evil. We simply need to see the choices for what they are, why we make or will make the choices that we make, and observe the outcome of those choices. See what works for us and what doesn't. That defines Who We Are, and we must experience Who We Are Not to define Who We Are. Whether it be someone who is against abortion, or someone who gets hurt. Those all, even though painful, will help us decide and define and declare even more of Who We Are. There's nothing wrong with it, it keeps the world turning.

I appreciate your input and view. Thank you forr sharing it with us.


And thank you SEXYMAMA for your posts, as well. And I really enjoy your sig quotes.

ok its late and im a little tired so forgive me if anything i say is already countered in previous arguements here, or if this is just babbling :D but here goes

I dont believe in free-will, everything that happens is shown as a choice, is weighed up by previous experience, the enviroment at the time, etc. So if you took a person making a choice about anything, the same choice would be made everytime, given the exact same circumstances, so the illusion of free-will is given, but in atual fact, the outcome was inevitable. Of course, there is no way to prove/disprove as such, as duplicating the entire universe to any given time is impossible.
though thinking about it more it could be possible with enough knowledge of a perticular person/thing to predict what it will do next, this is already done in world, catching criminals etc, it is pridicted they will break for home /friends for instance. Taking this to a new level, if known intimately about a person, every move could be predicted.
I am a athiest and dont believe in any god or soul, as such, brain processes are chemical reactions and electronic signals, nothing more.

This is going into what is intellegence, are we special,, what is a mind, but hopefully ive given you a little insight into my thinking, im very open to critisism as my views on this are still formulating and im keeping a very open mind,

Ill probabily come back to this tomorrow and wonder what the hell i was thinking but hey :)

OK here's my look at free will (this is not prewritten, so excuse me that the story is long-winded).

Free Will and the Chess Game
Let's say you are playing a game of chess against a friend. You make a single move in this game. This single move can be described as one of a thousand thoughts of possible moves that danced around your head before you acted. These thousand thoughts lead to the state of your brain before you made your move. In other words your brain, after all your thinking, reached a moment when it achieved enough clarity to which it felt prepared to make that move.

Well, let's go a millisecond before that moment. Did you have a choice whether you decided that the knight move was inferior to the pawn move? I say you don't, because the same brain would have made the same decision given the same situation every time.

Let's go even less backwards, though: a planck time (the shortest amount of time within which physics can accomplish anything) before that moment. Let's not think of this time period as the time in which you had a thought, but instead the time during which a thought was in the process of being thunk. Over the course of this Planck time, electrons moved according to physics. Chemical processes were happening according to the rules of chemistry. Neurons were in the midst of interacting because of electrochemistry. The question is, could any of these actions be defined as free will? Can physics equations be a tool of free will? I don't think so. And if you look at any planck time, these are the only things that are happening: physics and chemistry.

To summarize, I think that if you disprove determinism, you can prove free will, but I believe determinism, when the universe is looked at in its smallest quanta, must exist.

Thinking about this makes my head hurt. It is my opinion that many of these answers were given too quickly. Maybe I'm just too dumb to be decisive on the issue though. To me, it's too paradoxical a question to be answered by your average joe. My end answer is that there is such thing as free will, but more because I choose to believe this than because I understand why.

-=edit=-Heh, I guess it wasn't a good idea to use the word "choose" in response to a question about free will. :-P

-=edit=-I decided that tecoyah deserved props. That was a beautiful reply, and probably the best one any of us could have given.

So .....should I go ahead and delete my post now. And if I did, would that indeed change my original choice, or simply be a matter of exerting my will?

I would think "free will" is actually a matter of perception, rather than physical reality. If you think an action was yours to take (or leave alone) then it was.

Is there really free will?...do we really have a choice?

well, I don't think that this is an obvious question nor an answerable one. we are prisoners of our own mind and will never be able to observe it from a third-person-view.

however, it is interesting to keep in mind that we "control" ourselves via chemical interactions between millions of neurons. so, our choices are chemical. introduce a chemical to those neurons and our perceptions, choices, and reactions start to change. so, how much free will do we actually have? who knows, as it's all chemical, anyway.

I believe it's a rather fruitless question.

Do I believe that chemical and physical determinism in my neural activity determine my choices? That I am a machine designed to process information and that a combination of my genetics and experience plus random neural activity combine to form my so-called "choices"?

Yes.

Do I care? Not in the least.

Choice may not be a physical reality, but remains a human reality nonetheless. We can argue pointlessly whether choice has some sort of metaphysical reality so that we can affirm or refute skullfunk's physical deterministic answer, but the point is that sitting here in front of my computer, at this moment, I have choice. In my life, I am faced with options and I make decisions.

As I had posted in "The Butterfly Effect"

Fate and Free Will are a matter of perspective. Both exist in my opinion. From the perspective of the person making decisions you can do as you choose, but chances are in general you are going to be concerned about your well being to a certain degree. This is one aspect of predictability. From the outside perspective you are making choices that are governed by unkown factors that will control your life. But you are unaware of them as far as your perspective is concerned you are just making decisions. From an all knowing perspective all your decisions and the factors around it are predictable. We have no proof of such an all knowing perspective yet, although intuition tells some it exists.

To say that the "Fate" perspective is more valid than the "Free Will" perspective would probably have no basis to it. We have no proof that one perspective is better and more true than another. All perspectives exist amongst each other.

We have free will in the way that we can choose what we want to do with ourselves. We can choose to murder someone, or choose to give birth to a new life. However, as in all societies, there are rules, laws, and barriers that a person can not cross.

Rules, laws, and barriers can be crossed. They just typically aren't because people don't want to. Or, even more distrubing from my point of view, they are believed to uncrossable.

You can do anything if you have the means and are willing to face the consequences.

Yeah, thats what I meant. Any barriers can be crossed (1989- Berlin wall!!! Herher) but when it comes time, a person is always responsible for his/her own actions.

very very very interesting discussion. due to the experiences in my life, i tend to believe that we indeed have free will. but then again i believe in the butterfly effect.

I beleive we are born free and from there on everywhere in chains.

True, very true. We are all responsible for the actions we take- but even or Govt. laws (for example) we can choose to not obey- we just have to pay the consequences of the actions we take, such as breaking a law=going to jail. But that doesn't mean we don't have free will- because we did indeed choose to break the law. Everyone has a whole has chosen every possible choice, though it repeats in infinite spirals with different scenarios/situations/experiences. We are, however, brought up to believe that some things aren't choices at all. We're just told that "you just can't do that"/"it's wrong". But do we not think that some people have chosen those choices in which we were told are not choices or wrong choices? It's been done. It still is being done, and it always will be done. But the more resistance of all choices made, the more those choices will be made. It's our way as individuals of discovering the power of our own free will.

We have free will that's what makes us human... having choices

not having free will is not questioning it and other things like it :)

Thoughts are just chemical and electrical signals being passed around the brain. How do we have control over them, some magical free will force? It is all just an organized chain of events that lead to a thought or an action, and we are not the ones organizing it. The Matrix movies were "about" this subject.

are you sure that's "just" what they are?

we used to be SURE the earth was flat. we used to be SURE the earth was the center of the universe.

let's be careful about what we're sure about, especially with our (still) very limited knowledge about the world around us, hmmm?

Of course I'm not sure. I just thought that is what everyone believed, and it is what I believe. If that is all they are than I can't see how we can have free will.

I think it's pretty easy for many (i hope most) of us to accept causality in the world. If you drop a bowling ball on your foot, it's likely to hurt, and maybe you will break a bone or two. If you jump off a 1000ft tall building, you are likely to die. If you are taking a class and don't study, you are likely to do less well in the test. If you don't drink or eat for a few weeks, or months, you are likely to die. etc. You can construct more complicated cause-effect chain, too. And after a while, you find out that it's pretty hard to predict future.

If we accept something happens because of something that preceded it, then we can accept that our thoughts happen because of something that preceded it, either an action or another thought, or more likely a combination of many things. Is this too much of jump?

Then (some) people will suddenly jump up and freak out. Nononono, this can't be. My mind can't be determined by other things, because my mind is FREE! It has to be that there is free will, because I FEEL it. Why can't you FEEL it? Isn't it obvous? Yes, I have to believe that there is free will, because I'm not a robot, I'm not a slave to the circumstances.

When some people talk about free will, they often say or imply something like, "Look at this alcoholic. He is a loser because he chose to drink unreasonably large quantities of cheap booze when he could will himself not to drink. Why can't he just say no?

If by free will, you mean if you wish something hard enough and work hard enough, then you will be able to do something, like conquering alcoholism, or climbing Mount Everest. Of course, that means the alcoholics simply choose to be losers. And circumstances are no excuse. If your mother was an alcoholic, and your father was alcoholic, and your grandfather was alcoholic, and your brother is an alcoholic, that doesn't mean you have to be an alcholic. Just say no. Just put your mind to it. If you try hard enough, you will be successful. Don't pay attention to the statistics that says that you are 100 times more likely to be alcoholic.

If you were sexually molested as a child, I know it's very tough, but just get over it and become a doctor. Don't become like that loser stripper girl, Jennifer, next block, or like Bob, thefriendly neighborhood pedophile living in the trailer park few miles from here. You have a free will. You can get over it. Become a doctor. There is no problem, because your mind is free, completely free from any external influences. Remember, you have CHOICES.

Yes, you have 20 friends who smoke and 1 who don't. I know you feel like smoking sometimes but get over it. Use your judgement and exercise your FREE will and just don't smoke.

Yes, you on welfare. Just stop it, and become a genius like me. Remember, your mind is free. I know you are 40 years old and didn't quite finish junior high school, but that doesn't matter. Now is the time. I'm telling you that you are totally free to do whatever you want. Don't be a loser, become a college graduate just like me! No matter that my family trust paid for my private school, my first BMW and college education. No I'm not paying for your education. Get your own family wealth.

And you, just jumped out from an airplane, and you can't open your parachute? Well, try harder. If you can't open the parachute, then try flapping your arms very fast. And try to catch the updraft at the last moment. Good luck. You can do it! Don't give up!

Nice rhetoric, alkaloid, but I don't see the argument.

It seems to me to be rather clear that we have free will, in some sense of the word. Consider the two following arguments.

1. It is clear that we have moral responsibility for some of our actions. Yet some actions, which we might otherwise consider to be immoral, we excuse with language like "He was forced to". Now, leaving out cases where the 'compulsion' is merely coercion, it is rather easy to come up with cases where, in ordinary language, we'd describe the agent in question as acting against their will. We typically view this as exculpatory. Let us by stipulation call that feature, which ascribes to some acts moral responsibility and which excuses other acts when it is being acted against, free will.

2. Consider two scenarios where a man on the subway kicks my shin. In the first scenario, he does so 'accidentally' -- in this case, we would typically excuse his act; we would say he's not responsible for what he did. In the second scenario, he kicks me on purpose -- in this case, we would blame him for the act; we would say he's responsible. Let us call that faculty which is absent in the first case and present in the second 'free will'.

There are two things to notice about these arguments. Neither one presumes anything about the nature of free will -- neither the compatibilist and libertarian positions contradict these observations, at least on their face. But note also that if you deny the existence of free will; if you argue that it's all just causality, you will have, at least, a difficult time distinguishing between the cases where we assign moral responsibility and the cases we don't.

Can you give examples of these cases? Please.

alkaloid: see, the problem in your argument is that overcoming those odds ARE possible....they are at times monumental, but they ARE possible. as an example: my mother-in-law's mother, father, and brother were all alcoholics. she is not, by pure force of will. she's been drunk before, but she just decided that she wouldn't drink, and she hasn't.

so, while it seems harsh, the fact is that under normal circumstances (and sometimes under abnormal circumstances), you can accomplish what you want, if your 'will' is strong enough. if i work hard enough, then i CAN climb mt everest. if i try hard enough, i CAN break my nailbiting habit. if i try hard enough, i CAN kick my smoking habit.

please don't confuse a lack of discipline with a lack of free will.

noahfor -- I've already given one. Do you want more?

Re: Free will
 

If you look at the old testimate you see countless expamples of the "father" side of God. I've always thought that's why he made us, for him to be our "father" and us to be his childeren.

Therefore, have you ever met a father that didn't want his childeren to have free will? If he created us without freewill we'd simply be pupets.

God's not like that, he's all about the relationship.

I think i see where your coming from with the you have the choice if you try hard enough to overcome odds. But my belief, - that we have no real free will is deeper than this.

For example take the drinking example, your mother doesnt drink, the past experiances, knowing father and brother and how they get, all external pressure, everything that influences her, all push the decisions she makes one way or another, so although she may think she has the choice to drink or not to drink, in actual fact due to everything influencing her she would only make the one choice, that is not to drink. Everyone has the same thing happen with every event in thier lives, will i cross the road? my thought processes at the time due to the makeup of my brain due to events that happened the enviroment etc all lead to only one conclusion, may it be cross or not.

So though we feel we have made the decision it actual fact we''re just particles interacting with each other, with enough monitoring the future could be predicted.

Take criminal pychologists, they have the job of predicting what a criminal, murderer or whatever will do next, they can see by the crime. If you "get into the head" of the criminal enough it can be predicted what they will. Take this to another level with normal people, things etc, and you should in theory predict what will happen, until the end of time.

This gives a illusion that we have choice but in reality we dont.

Im an athiest and dont believe in a higher power.

I hope someone can challege this and throw up a counterarguement im very openminded about this :)

I'll challenge you, even though I believe what you say. Particles of matter move and what not according to true probability. When you flip a coin there is a 50/50 chance it will land heads, but that isn't true probabiility, one can predict on which side it will land, it isn't probable, which side will land is determined once the coin is flipped and maybe even before that, but the path a certain particle will take, or the position it will end up is not definite until it take the path. Any path it can take is only a possible one. Obviously my understanding of quantum mechanics is not very good, but bear with me. Maybe humans have some magical free will power which lets us decide which of many possible paths our brain atoms can take when they are involved in making a choice or thinking. Now I don't actually believe this. I believe we don't have free will on two levels. One is that we are just atoms, and they move about on their own, and their actions can be predicted, and you get it. Another is that our choices are influenced by feeling, and that we don't actually decide on what we feel, so we are just going by feelings that we have not chosen to feel. I can explain this better when I'm in the right state of mind.

As far as predicatibility goes -- well, fine. So, proximally and for the most part, you can predict what someone is going to do, and the better you know that person, the more accurate your predictions. But just because people are predictable, doesn't mean that they don't have free will. It just means they're predictable.

So, we are just atoms? But because of quantum indeterminacy, the behavior of atoms cannot be predicted with total accuracy. (In any case, even if you're an bald naturalist about mental phenomena, it's not atoms, but electrical impulses. But I digress).

And yes, our choices are influenced by feeling. They're influenced by a lot of things. That's why they're choices. If choice was merely random, it wouldn't be free will.

It's probably good to note that I am not proposing here that free will is incompatible with determinism. Nothing I've said contradicts the compatibilist position. Now, if it turns out that, as a condition of possibility for morality, free will needs to be radically free, compatibilism will turn out to be false. But I've not said anything that would necessarily lead someone to that conclusion.

Well actually an electrical impulse only travels across one neuron before molecules are needed to carry on the signal, and the neurotransmitter system determines the nature of the "signal" that is traveling through the brain, so saying atoms is just as correct as saying electrical impulses, especially since I was just using atoms to represent the physical predictable nature of the brain, whereas you were saying that mental phenomena consists solely of electrical impulses.

This is indeed an interesting discussion. I beleive that the only true freedom any of us has is the freedom to decide for ourselves what life is all about (which nails my atheist beliefs firmly to the mast!).

Secondly, whilst I believe that those people intelligent enough to make informed choices about their lives (ie free will) can do so, whilst the common herd follow their stomachs and their genitals . . . I feel that the discussion in this thread so far has been too 'philosophical' and detached from reality.

What I mean is that even if you accept that you have free will you must consider the specific realities of your situation. You can only exercise your theoretical freewil on the choices which are offered you! ie. you MUST choose from the foodstuffs and carsa and technology and TV programmes and music and movies WHICH ARE PROVIDED FOR YOU IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD! Conspiracy theory alert! It is the people who control the limited choices which you have open to you who have the real control . . . . so maybe not as free as you think huh? Lets see if any of you Americans can go out and choose to buy a bottle of Barrs Irn Bru and a Caramac chocolate Bar? I know I cant buy any of the stuff you Americans can buy? Wheres the freewill gone?