Thread: A Clockwork Orange-esque debate.

Okay so everyone here as explained to me why I don't have free will, which I see you're point but my definition is much more narrow. Of course I don't have any choice in where I born, raised, or taught as a child, but I do have the freedom to make immediate choices about my current situation. I was conditioned not to behave violently, but if I wanted to, I could grab a gun go out and shoot a bunch of people just because I felt like it. Does the universe have an immediate say in whether I do or do not act on that? I don't see how.

Anyway, HOW DO YOU FOLKS DEFINE FREE WILL? From the sounds of it, its almost like you guys want free will from the very beginning. You want to choose where you're from, what you believe in, what you have been taught, conditioned, etc, etc and hell, let's through in the ability to control the very fabric of the universe. That's not free will. That's playing god in my opinion. We are all conditioned; but to honestly believe that every single choice you have ever made or ever will make is due to some grand design or plot or even mathematical equation sounds almost like a complete fear of responsibility.

Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries

Okay so everyone here as explained to me why I don't have free will, which I see you're point but my definition is much more narrow. Of course I don't have any choice in where I born, raised, or taught as a child, but I do have the freedom to make immediate choices about my current situation. I was conditioned not to behave violently, but if I wanted to, I could grab a gun go out and shoot a bunch of people just because I felt like it. Does the universe have an immediate say in whether I do or do not act on that? I don't see how.

No, no, no. It's not just about your upbringing, it's much deeper than that. Yes, the universe has "an immediate say" in whether you go on a shooting spree or do anything else. Your actions are causally determined (or probabilistically determined) by the prior interactions of all the matter and energy in the universe that is causally connected to the atoms making up your brain and body. Your brain is just another chunk of matter, responding in predictable ways to interactions with the rest of the universe. The fact that those interactions are tremendously complex doesn't mean that the outcome is any less pre-determined.

Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries

Anyway, HOW DO YOU FOLKS DEFINE FREE WILL? From the sounds of it, its almost like you guys want free will from the very beginning. You want to choose where you're from, what you believe in, what you have been taught, conditioned, etc, etc and hell, let's through in the ability to control the very fabric of the universe. That's not free will. That's playing god in my opinion. We are all conditioned; but to honestly believe that every single choice you have ever made or ever will make is due to some grand design or plot or even mathematical equation sounds almost like a complete fear of responsibility.

Mathematical equation would be most like it; a mathematical equation describing the interactions of all the matter and energy in the universe from the Big Bang up until right this second (and going on into the future, until the Big Crunch or what-have-you). Yes, I know it can seem like a fear or abdication of responsibility. I don't really know what to say to that. For better or for worse, the concept of "free will" is pretty dubious from a scientific perspective. It basically amounts to believing in magic, because it means you believe that there is something inside each person--in their brain, or in their "soul" or whatever--that is unaffected by causality, that is utterly divorced from the causal chain that determines everything else in the universe. And causality is pretty much one of the most ironclad principles that exists in science. All human understanding of the universe rests of causality.

I'm going to handle this post from a more psychological/philosophical vantage point than syme, because that's my bag.

Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries

Okay so everyone here as explained to me why I don't have free will, which I see you're point but my definition is much more narrow. Of course I don't have any choice in where I born, raised, or taught as a child, but I do have the freedom to make immediate choices about my current situation. I was conditioned not to behave violently, but if I wanted to, I could grab a gun go out and shoot a bunch of people just because I felt like it. Does the universe have an immediate say in whether I do or do not act on that? I don't see how.

Yes, but you have to analyse WHY you would do that. You have nothing left to lose? It was the external cause of losing everything else that set you off, and maybe the classic film archetype of the disenfranchised bad guy that made you choose that role. Because you can't stand the idea of being wholly determined and you think that that behaviour is unpredictable? Then you think it's unpredictable because of your upbringing (based on the behaviour you think is "predictable", based on what you've learned), and you're acting that way because we told you everything is determined and you didn't like that because of the way you think because of your upbringing. Everything you are is necessarily because of what you've learned and been, and therefore everything you do is totally inevitable. I don't see what's so hard to grasp about this. Anything else has to be wholly religious and metaphysical. You talk as though there's a difference between all the stuff you learned, what happened to you in the past, and what you would do RIGHT NOW. But tell me, could you start talking fluent chinese right now? Could you suddenly believe in Islam? Could you get angry at your dad without it being because of something he did (an EXTERNAL FACTOR) and if you could then do you really think it wouldn't be hormonal (i.e another determined, preprogrammed thing)

Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries

Anyway, HOW DO YOU FOLKS DEFINE FREE WILL? From the sounds of it, its almost like you guys want free will from the very beginning. You want to choose where you're from, what you believe in, what you have been taught, conditioned, etc, etc and hell, let's through in the ability to control the very fabric of the universe. That's not free will. That's playing god in my opinion. We are all conditioned; but to honestly believe that every single choice you have ever made or ever will make is due to some grand design or plot or even mathematical equation sounds almost like a complete fear of responsibility.

Neither wishing to playing God nor a fear of responsibility. Just accepting that empiricism is valid. That means that we know because of cause and effect that every time we drop a pen it will fall to the ground, and if it doesn't it was another factor that stopped it. Therefore the universe is predictable (i.e gravity was the cause of the pen falling to the ground, if it didn't it was because of another cause. The pen has no "Free Will" to "Choose" to be in the air). Therefore, unless there's a contradiction in science, we, however complex, are also predictable.
You hear drug dealers and violent men excused every day for "falling in with a bad crowd" or "being brought up wrong"; determinism says that we are ALL the way we are because of the crowd we fell into, the way we are brought up. This means that EVERYONE needs to take responsibility for who they are because EVERYONE is just a collaboration of the events and people that shaped them. That's egalitarian, not responsibility-shirking. Sure, it's merciful. No one can be blamed by those sensible to how fatal it all was for what they did, but by the same token, we don't have any excuse because we're all equally determined, and we can't say that it was only causality that made us that way, because we are WHOLLY JUST that causality.