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Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free w

Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free will it’s still influenced to some degree by our biology.

nyokodo 2y ago
> Free will hasn’t been proven. Free will is something that we experience which provides extremely compelling evidence that it is true. Things don't have to be empirically proven in order to be true, if that were the case then empiricism itself would fail the test as it has never been established to be true empirically.
- nikkwong 2y ago
  How do you know you experience it beyond a reasonable doubt? Thoughts and intentions just seemingly appear in consciousness, without any explanation as to how they arose. Feelings are like this too; we don’t determine how we feel, we are simply served them. When experiencing a negative emotion, some people seem to believe they can ‘free will’ their way out of it by thinking positively or something there over, but that intention too is also just a thought that appears in consciousness. To decide what to think in a manner compatible with what most people think free will is would require you to decide what to think or feel before actually thinking or feeling it, which is not possible. And when you think about the causality of feelings or thoughts, which are just neuronal signaling patterns/chains in the brain, it begins to appear much more mechanical than free will intention.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Hrm? When I think of things I tend to see multiple possibilities at once, and then decide which I think is the most reasonable, and go from there. Similar for emotions. I'm well aware of my emotions but can control them. And I think not doing so would be quite a poor way to behave. Perhaps it's that we all think in somewhat different ways, yet because our own mind is the only one that we will ever know - we simply posit that everybody else must think the same way, or at least quite similarly. For instance there's that weird datum that supposedly some huge percent of people don't have an inner monologue, at all. I find it extremely difficult to believe, but if it were true then it would certainly be much easier to understand how somebody else might not believe in free will.
    - pjerem 2y ago
      > Hrm? When I think of things I tend to see multiple possibilities at once, and then decide which I think is the most reasonable, and go from there. And based on what do you decide ? Probably your past experience, your knowledge, your education and your moral values. Which are all somehow environmental factors.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Of course. I'm not saying environment has no impact at all - that would be plainly absurd. I am saying that, in the end, the choice of what you do is up to you. Your experiences will influence, but they will not dictate you. I assume you'll appeal to physicalism here, but at that point we just end up getting into an unanswerable philosophical debate. So I would simply say that while what I'm assuming is not falsifiable, neither is physicalism. I'm largely swayed by the 'conscious experience.' Presumably neither of us believe that if you make a program to add 2+2, that some entity suddenly pops into existence and imagines itself to be adding 2+2 only to then zip out out of existence. Where we may differ is that I don't think that changes if we go from adding 2+2, to instead sequentially carrying out arbitrarily more simple instruction. Yet here we are - 'passenger' or 'driver' in a body feeling as though we have complete control over our own actions. I tend to believe what lay before my eyes. And so in this case, I am obligated to reject this as being an emergent property of complexity, or as a facade. Which, in turn, obligates me to reject physicalism.
    - samus 2y ago
      The amount of possibilities you see might be influenced by your emotional state, and what you call "reasonable" might not be the same thing as other people consider it. A lot of our reasoning are applications of observations and best practices rules that we are sometimes not really aware of unless challenged by circumstances or outsiders. This is to some degree necessary - the outside world is too complex to fully model inside our minds. The most important things that we can only build approximate models about are other people.
    - nikkwong 2y ago
      Are you positing that you have free will but that those around you with less emotional control don’t? I don’t think your example is serving your argument; your brain is structured in such a way that you reason in a way that is unique to you, and others reason otherwise based on the structure of their brains. I don’t see how this grants you free will. You’re talking about feelings and reasoning as part of conscious experience and that’s, in my opinion, the end state of all of the neurological activity that pointed us to feel or think a certain way in the present moment. The chain of causality that leads to thoughts and emotions in consciousness is completely determined by the structure and action potentials that propagate through our brain and nothing else, and this doesn’t leave room for some conscious agent in our brain also pulling levers and further modifying causality.
  - nyokodo 2y ago
    > How do you know you experience it beyond a reasonable doubt? I have no reason to doubt my common sense experience. > we don’t determine how we feel, we are simply served it. No definition of free will that I have encountered considers it an absolute freedom from any form of determinism. We’re obviously influenced by our nature and external influences. For instance my emotional predispositions are largely determined and my thoughts are not entirely under my control but I do have scope to shape both my emotions and my thoughts over time by what I choose to focus on. I can choose to do what is necessary to change my behavior and to treat people differently than what comes naturally. I know all of this because I have done it, I have experienced it. No materialist philosophy of mind has produced any compelling evidence to contradict my experience of free will in this capacity.
    - nikkwong 2y ago
      I sort of responded to this idea in another comment, but again. How can you take ‘personal credit’ (as if you could have acted otherwise) for choosing to change your behavior? Isn’t that an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow?
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
        > an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow This seems to be an idiosyncratic definition of free will.
        vasco 2y ago
        On the other hand, I think it's simplistic to equate picking options from a mental list as "free will". I think the point you are replying to is valid because if there's free will, it's not just "choosing from a list". The list itself (the options you present yourself) has way more impact on your behavior than what you choose, even. So the matter of the question is, do you have free will in forming a list.
- ixsploit 2y ago
  How are you experiencing free will? You have no idea what your next thought will be, nor can you control it. You have the opinion that you have free will, but that doesn't mean it's true.
  - piloto_ciego 2y ago
    You can’t choose what you will think about? How do you get through the day? Are you just frequently blindsided by random non-sequiturs that derail you for hours? I routinely chose things to think about or things to concentrate on. It’s not like all thoughts leap into my mind fully formed either. Hell, I edited this message before hitting reply.
    - huygens6363 2y ago
      And what process do you propose decided to think “I chose my thoughts and what to concentrate on”? Surely you must see this is problems all the way down.
      - piloto_ciego 2y ago
        Simply think about what you want to concentrate on, then concentrate on that until you get tired or physically can’t concentrate on it any more? I would be shocked if I was the only one on HN who ever thought, “I don’t want to think about this right now, I want to think about <whatever>” and then stopped thinking about the first thing. In aviation there’s even actually training on division of attention and learning to prioritize and concentrate selectively. You evaluate the situation and classify things as “important” or “not important” then focus in the important stuff. Literally choosing what to think about in the moment. You’ve never said “gotta concentrate on this now,” and then concentrated on it very hard? Everyone on here is going overly reductive and going into infinite regress as though that proves their point, but it’s Sorites Paradox. “Oh where did the decision about its importance come from? Well that’s entirely the product of your environment! Checkmate free will!” But it’s a lot simpler than that, in the heat of the moment if you don’t have time you tend to fall back to your training, but in other decisions - even when making a choice about what to think about - you can even hold a bit of a discussion with yourself, or lay out the pros and cons to decide what to do, evaluate them all and then choose. You can absolutely choose to think about one thing or think about another. That’s its own sort of free will. As I read a lot of these comments I really pity the people who don’t believe they’re imbued with free will. It really makes me wonder about their lives and upbringing.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Existence of mental illness or troubles makes me doubt that. What is free will when you are suffering from pathological procrastination, depression or addiction ? If you accept the fact that, like in addictions, your brain chemistry makes you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol even when you know you’ll die from it and know it makes you miserable then how can you be convinced that you really control your normal behaviors ? Why does anxiety makes me stay in my couch and antidepressants makes me want to go outside ? I understand free will as a moral concept but at a biological level, i feel like it adds a lot of shaming and suffering to people who struggle to modify their behavior because science now knows that changing behavior is hard and impossible without physical modification of the brain structure.
  - verisimi 2y ago
    Could depression, or other mental illnesses, be the outcome of one's bad decisions (or failure to make decisions)?
    - jononor 2y ago
      Possible in some circumstances. But also possible that they are the result of other peoples actions (example: emotionally abusive parents or partner)
      - verisimi 2y ago
        If you have an emotionally abusive partner, and don't do something about it, perhaps depression is acting as a prompt for you to take action. Some part of you (your soul, say) knows better, and via pain (depression) is trying to shift you towards a better, more joyful, result. I believe we have an innate guiding system, and that this is how it works - move away from pain, towards joy. You can fail to take action, you can take drugs to manage the negative situation more comfortably, but, if abuse is the underlying issue, a genuine change of circumstances is required.
        wizardwes 2y ago
piloto_ciego 2y ago
My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands. Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though.
- threatofrain 2y ago
  Not really. We don't need an answer to the question of free will to react to anything.
- huygens6363 2y ago
  I’m not sure what the point is? Why can’t I be angry? Surely you must see anger is and never will be rational (and also not free). My anger at your slapping is as much determined as your slapping. I see no problem. Free will arguments usually refer to these “justice requires freedom”-like arguments and I feel that’s not the case at all. You can punish, you can feel anger. It’s all included. You cannot separate reactions, this one is free, this one is not. It’s a package deal.
  - vasco 2y ago
    There's free will in the sense that the system is so chaotic and complex that it's impossible to predict for us now at current technology levels, maybe never possible to predict, but I don't see anything in science that would allow free will to be a thing. We're complex automata in the end.
    - piloto_ciego 2y ago
      I think this is a failure in imagination not a failure in science. Still, all these free will deniers are basing their worldview on the (radical) assumption that. 1. Everything has a cause 2. Everything is explainable 3. physical matter is all there is 4. Science can describe literally everything about the universe 4a. Corollary - things that aren’t describable by science don’t exist All of those claims are unfalsifiable at best and demonstrably false at worst (depending on how hard you squint). Science is effective for repeatable experiments, but that’s not a guarantee that there aren’t events that are one-and-done.
jampekka 2y ago
Free will is more ideological dogma than a factual claim. From materialist standpoint it's untenable. And empirically we see that environment dominates thinking and behavior. Free will is the foundation of most judeo-christian moral systems, which were inherited by liberalism. It's the justification for punishshing and rewading individuals. It seems to work relatively well, but I find it very cruel.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > I find it very cruel What's a better and less cruel alternative?
  - jampekka 2y ago
    Trying to address the problems in environments that produce unwanted behavior. And help the individuals exhibiting such behavior to change it. I find re-education, be it camps or not, a lot less cruel and effective than e.g. throwing people in prisons or killing them.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      We already do this. "Re-education" (yikes at the word, but I see what you mean) is an attempt to get people to make better choices. E.g. to use their will to override their impulses.
tmnvix 2y ago
The whole debate around the existence of free will seems almost tautological to me. I've heard it said that the concept doesn't even exist in many cultures and that its importance in western culture can be largely attributed to the need to justify the concept of 'original sin'. For me at least, free will is a concept with no value.
hju22_-3 2y ago
Free will hasn't been disproven either. It's up in the air how much is undetermined, and how to define being "schakled" in the context of no free will. Even if we are affected by ourself and others, that does not prove a lack of free will.

nyokodo 2y ago

> Free will hasn’t been proven. Free will is something that we experience which provides extremely compelling evidence that it is true. Things don't have to be empirically proven in order to be true, if that were the case then empiricism itself would fail the test as it has never been established to be true empirically.

nikkwong 2y ago
How do you know you experience it beyond a reasonable doubt? Thoughts and intentions just seemingly appear in consciousness, without any explanation as to how they arose. Feelings are like this too; we don’t determine how we feel, we are simply served them. When experiencing a negative emotion, some people seem to believe they can ‘free will’ their way out of it by thinking positively or something there over, but that intention too is also just a thought that appears in consciousness. To decide what to think in a manner compatible with what most people think free will is would require you to decide what to think or feel before actually thinking or feeling it, which is not possible. And when you think about the causality of feelings or thoughts, which are just neuronal signaling patterns/chains in the brain, it begins to appear much more mechanical than free will intention.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Hrm? When I think of things I tend to see multiple possibilities at once, and then decide which I think is the most reasonable, and go from there. Similar for emotions. I'm well aware of my emotions but can control them. And I think not doing so would be quite a poor way to behave. Perhaps it's that we all think in somewhat different ways, yet because our own mind is the only one that we will ever know - we simply posit that everybody else must think the same way, or at least quite similarly. For instance there's that weird datum that supposedly some huge percent of people don't have an inner monologue, at all. I find it extremely difficult to believe, but if it were true then it would certainly be much easier to understand how somebody else might not believe in free will.
  - pjerem 2y ago
    > Hrm? When I think of things I tend to see multiple possibilities at once, and then decide which I think is the most reasonable, and go from there. And based on what do you decide ? Probably your past experience, your knowledge, your education and your moral values. Which are all somehow environmental factors.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Of course. I'm not saying environment has no impact at all - that would be plainly absurd. I am saying that, in the end, the choice of what you do is up to you. Your experiences will influence, but they will not dictate you. I assume you'll appeal to physicalism here, but at that point we just end up getting into an unanswerable philosophical debate. So I would simply say that while what I'm assuming is not falsifiable, neither is physicalism. I'm largely swayed by the 'conscious experience.' Presumably neither of us believe that if you make a program to add 2+2, that some entity suddenly pops into existence and imagines itself to be adding 2+2 only to then zip out out of existence. Where we may differ is that I don't think that changes if we go from adding 2+2, to instead sequentially carrying out arbitrarily more simple instruction. Yet here we are - 'passenger' or 'driver' in a body feeling as though we have complete control over our own actions. I tend to believe what lay before my eyes. And so in this case, I am obligated to reject this as being an emergent property of complexity, or as a facade. Which, in turn, obligates me to reject physicalism.
  - samus 2y ago
    The amount of possibilities you see might be influenced by your emotional state, and what you call "reasonable" might not be the same thing as other people consider it. A lot of our reasoning are applications of observations and best practices rules that we are sometimes not really aware of unless challenged by circumstances or outsiders. This is to some degree necessary - the outside world is too complex to fully model inside our minds. The most important things that we can only build approximate models about are other people.
  - nikkwong 2y ago
    Are you positing that you have free will but that those around you with less emotional control don’t? I don’t think your example is serving your argument; your brain is structured in such a way that you reason in a way that is unique to you, and others reason otherwise based on the structure of their brains. I don’t see how this grants you free will. You’re talking about feelings and reasoning as part of conscious experience and that’s, in my opinion, the end state of all of the neurological activity that pointed us to feel or think a certain way in the present moment. The chain of causality that leads to thoughts and emotions in consciousness is completely determined by the structure and action potentials that propagate through our brain and nothing else, and this doesn’t leave room for some conscious agent in our brain also pulling levers and further modifying causality.
- nyokodo 2y ago
  > How do you know you experience it beyond a reasonable doubt? I have no reason to doubt my common sense experience. > we don’t determine how we feel, we are simply served it. No definition of free will that I have encountered considers it an absolute freedom from any form of determinism. We’re obviously influenced by our nature and external influences. For instance my emotional predispositions are largely determined and my thoughts are not entirely under my control but I do have scope to shape both my emotions and my thoughts over time by what I choose to focus on. I can choose to do what is necessary to change my behavior and to treat people differently than what comes naturally. I know all of this because I have done it, I have experienced it. No materialist philosophy of mind has produced any compelling evidence to contradict my experience of free will in this capacity.
  - nikkwong 2y ago
    I sort of responded to this idea in another comment, but again. How can you take ‘personal credit’ (as if you could have acted otherwise) for choosing to change your behavior? Isn’t that an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow?
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > an idea that also just appears in consciousness that is, for inexplicable reasons, more compelling than other ideas at the time so that is the choice that your brain reasons to follow This seems to be an idiosyncratic definition of free will.
      - vasco 2y ago
        On the other hand, I think it's simplistic to equate picking options from a mental list as "free will". I think the point you are replying to is valid because if there's free will, it's not just "choosing from a list". The list itself (the options you present yourself) has way more impact on your behavior than what you choose, even. So the matter of the question is, do you have free will in forming a list.
ixsploit 2y ago
How are you experiencing free will? You have no idea what your next thought will be, nor can you control it. You have the opinion that you have free will, but that doesn't mean it's true.
- piloto_ciego 2y ago
  You can’t choose what you will think about? How do you get through the day? Are you just frequently blindsided by random non-sequiturs that derail you for hours? I routinely chose things to think about or things to concentrate on. It’s not like all thoughts leap into my mind fully formed either. Hell, I edited this message before hitting reply.
  - huygens6363 2y ago
    And what process do you propose decided to think “I chose my thoughts and what to concentrate on”? Surely you must see this is problems all the way down.
    - piloto_ciego 2y ago
      Simply think about what you want to concentrate on, then concentrate on that until you get tired or physically can’t concentrate on it any more? I would be shocked if I was the only one on HN who ever thought, “I don’t want to think about this right now, I want to think about <whatever>” and then stopped thinking about the first thing. In aviation there’s even actually training on division of attention and learning to prioritize and concentrate selectively. You evaluate the situation and classify things as “important” or “not important” then focus in the important stuff. Literally choosing what to think about in the moment. You’ve never said “gotta concentrate on this now,” and then concentrated on it very hard? Everyone on here is going overly reductive and going into infinite regress as though that proves their point, but it’s Sorites Paradox. “Oh where did the decision about its importance come from? Well that’s entirely the product of your environment! Checkmate free will!” But it’s a lot simpler than that, in the heat of the moment if you don’t have time you tend to fall back to your training, but in other decisions - even when making a choice about what to think about - you can even hold a bit of a discussion with yourself, or lay out the pros and cons to decide what to do, evaluate them all and then choose. You can absolutely choose to think about one thing or think about another. That’s its own sort of free will. As I read a lot of these comments I really pity the people who don’t believe they’re imbued with free will. It really makes me wonder about their lives and upbringing.
pjerem 2y ago
Existence of mental illness or troubles makes me doubt that. What is free will when you are suffering from pathological procrastination, depression or addiction ? If you accept the fact that, like in addictions, your brain chemistry makes you smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol even when you know you’ll die from it and know it makes you miserable then how can you be convinced that you really control your normal behaviors ? Why does anxiety makes me stay in my couch and antidepressants makes me want to go outside ? I understand free will as a moral concept but at a biological level, i feel like it adds a lot of shaming and suffering to people who struggle to modify their behavior because science now knows that changing behavior is hard and impossible without physical modification of the brain structure.
- verisimi 2y ago
  Could depression, or other mental illnesses, be the outcome of one's bad decisions (or failure to make decisions)?
  - jononor 2y ago
    Possible in some circumstances. But also possible that they are the result of other peoples actions (example: emotionally abusive parents or partner)
    - verisimi 2y ago
      If you have an emotionally abusive partner, and don't do something about it, perhaps depression is acting as a prompt for you to take action. Some part of you (your soul, say) knows better, and via pain (depression) is trying to shift you towards a better, more joyful, result. I believe we have an innate guiding system, and that this is how it works - move away from pain, towards joy. You can fail to take action, you can take drugs to manage the negative situation more comfortably, but, if abuse is the underlying issue, a genuine change of circumstances is required.
      - wizardwes 2y ago

piloto_ciego 2y ago

My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands. Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though.

threatofrain 2y ago
Not really. We don't need an answer to the question of free will to react to anything.
huygens6363 2y ago
I’m not sure what the point is? Why can’t I be angry? Surely you must see anger is and never will be rational (and also not free). My anger at your slapping is as much determined as your slapping. I see no problem. Free will arguments usually refer to these “justice requires freedom”-like arguments and I feel that’s not the case at all. You can punish, you can feel anger. It’s all included. You cannot separate reactions, this one is free, this one is not. It’s a package deal.
- vasco 2y ago
  There's free will in the sense that the system is so chaotic and complex that it's impossible to predict for us now at current technology levels, maybe never possible to predict, but I don't see anything in science that would allow free will to be a thing. We're complex automata in the end.
  - piloto_ciego 2y ago
    I think this is a failure in imagination not a failure in science. Still, all these free will deniers are basing their worldview on the (radical) assumption that. 1. Everything has a cause 2. Everything is explainable 3. physical matter is all there is 4. Science can describe literally everything about the universe 4a. Corollary - things that aren’t describable by science don’t exist All of those claims are unfalsifiable at best and demonstrably false at worst (depending on how hard you squint). Science is effective for repeatable experiments, but that’s not a guarantee that there aren’t events that are one-and-done.

jampekka 2y ago

Free will is more ideological dogma than a factual claim. From materialist standpoint it's untenable. And empirically we see that environment dominates thinking and behavior. Free will is the foundation of most judeo-christian moral systems, which were inherited by liberalism. It's the justification for punishshing and rewading individuals. It seems to work relatively well, but I find it very cruel.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> I find it very cruel What's a better and less cruel alternative?
- jampekka 2y ago
  Trying to address the problems in environments that produce unwanted behavior. And help the individuals exhibiting such behavior to change it. I find re-education, be it camps or not, a lot less cruel and effective than e.g. throwing people in prisons or killing them.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    We already do this. "Re-education" (yikes at the word, but I see what you mean) is an attempt to get people to make better choices. E.g. to use their will to override their impulses.

tmnvix 2y ago

The whole debate around the existence of free will seems almost tautological to me. I've heard it said that the concept doesn't even exist in many cultures and that its importance in western culture can be largely attributed to the need to justify the concept of 'original sin'. For me at least, free will is a concept with no value.

hju22_-3 2y ago

Free will hasn't been disproven either. It's up in the air how much is undetermined, and how to define being "schakled" in the context of no free will. Even if we are affected by ourself and others, that does not prove a lack of free will.