Philosophy discussion

Free will, does it exist...well the way I figure it, if I think it does, then its good enough for me! For now, LOL.

Sandysconnected wrote: "Free will, does it exist...well the way I figure it, if I think it does, then its good enough for me! For now, LOL."

But you were forced to say that by the movements and chemical processes in your brain which started at birth. You had no choice.

Hi Tyler / Chris

This is a good 'taffy' question.

On one hand, I lean toward a view of free will as an illusion. We lieve within certain parameters that give us an understanding of the price or consequence of the choices we make. To say we choose implies free will, but when our available options are selected from within society's / employer's / family's acceptable limits, how free our we?

On the other hand, I look down my nose at determinism, when it seems to make people lazy and unwilling to accept responsibility for their own lives / decisions.

Hi CK --

I agree that free will does exist in some form. But as you say, our situation places real limits on it. I would add, too, that society conditions our psychological makeup when we're young, and this can have the effect of limiting our freedom by limiting what's acceptable or worthwhile to think about.

Tyler

It's interesting that you mention the shaping of the young, as I am currently living with 5 children. How do we teach, as in sharing the knowledge we have accumulated, without stifling their ability to discover on their own? Is there anything that is not worth thinking about?

Hi CK --

It's inevitable that society will impose its values on the young, including whatever random preoccupations exist in any particular place. Anything not included in these preoccupations is implicitly not worth thinking about.

To get out of that bubble, encouraging intellectual curiosity is one step. But after that, I think it's important for young people to learn to ask questions and question things they encounter. A healthy degree of skepticism in an adult is a good way to get beyond childhood conditioning develop what free will one does have.

Was it destined that I would eat chocolate pudding for breakfast this morning, or did I actively decide, based on my free will, to ignore the cereal in my cupboard and go for the pudding instead? :)
If I fall back on strange eating habits, I guess predermination wins. If I say 'cause I just wanted to, I guess free will wins. Suggestions?

Lisa,

Here's my take on it. I have been giving the topic of free will vs determinism a lot of thought lately again because I am moderating a discussion on the topic at my local library the end of May.

When I taught high school philosophy, I would set up a scale on the board for students to mark where they stood at the beginning of the discussion. For example, on this topic I would have 0 to 10 with 0 being total determinism and 10 being total free will. At the present time, I am less than 1 with an arrow pointing to 0. I would also have them point an arrow in the direction they were leaning. No one could just list 5 with no arrow. Where are you? Or anyone else who wants to join in?

The only reason I can't move to 0 totally is that like most people I FEEL like I have at least some free will left. I'm very skeptical that I actually have any free will, but I can't quite shake the FEELING.

Two words I don't like in your post #116 are "destined" and "predetermination." I don't believe in "destiny" and I don't believe that anything is "predetermined" in the long ago past. So I would leave off the prefix "-pre."

Think of your past up to the present time as a straight line. It can't be changed in any way. It's absolute. All your tears can't wash out a word of if I may quote the Persian poet Omar Khayyam.

Now the present is a dot on that line. It moves along slowly but inexorably. Point by point it moves. Right now you are reading this post and absorbing what I am saying. Ideas are forming in your head almost miraculously. It seems like a miracle but it's not. It's just your brain functioning. It tends to give you a sense that there is something more than your brain, like a mind or a soul or an imagination or an ego or a self. But there is just a brain. Those other words only cloud the picture.

In the example you bring up about your breakfast. Ask yourself, why did you have those two choices in your cabinet? How disciplined are you on your eating habits? Do you ever cook a meal? You can think of countless other questions that explain the situation at that precise moment on your straight life line that you "decided" to eat pudding. There may be countless reasons for that moment that you ate the pudding.

If we call eating pudding vs eating cereal an example of free will, pardon me if I forbear from dancing a jig of excitement at the wonders of free will. At this precise moment at this point on your line of life how insignificant is the limited amount of free will you may possibly have. Everything I say and your reaction to it, all go in to your life line and influence future actions at future points in time. I'm inclined to believe that those actions will be determined by what went on before.

I just joined this group because of this question. It is the question which plagues me.

When my mother died of Alzheimer's Disease, I was one of the only people who knew what became of her. Most people thought of her as if she was still forty. People spoke of her attributes but her attributes had vanished. But I find it impossible to say her life was any less real than it was when she was conscious of herself as an individual who thought she was involved in determining her fate.

We can only make decisions based on what we are conscious of and we are conscious of so little.

Scientists have proved that we act before we are aware of acting. It is a matter of a fraction of a second between the action performed and the thought of performing it, giving us the illusion of making a decision.

There is such a short span in our life when we are conscious of ourselves, certain that we possess certain traits. As babies we are unaware, as children we are inventing personalities based on so many influences: first heredity which has nothing to do with "us"--then environment which is far more than a storyline. We create a storyline as if our lives are linear but they are really multi-dimensional, having very little to do with our self-concept. "What went wrong?" we ask when things happen that seem "out of character" to us because we try to make ourselves solid. Regarding solidity, we are mostly empty space.

I fear I am unclear...

It is late at night and before writing this I wrote a very long post which made more sense but when I put it on "preview" it got erased--so I am sending this without previewing it. Forgive the mistakes or carelessness. Was it erased by me, was it a mistake, was it pre-destination? Whatever it is, I am giving a very different impression of myself than the depression I would have given had my other post not been erased (by me? by fate?)

I won't have a computer for a week or so but I look forward to following this discussion.

(plus I now realize the last post on this subject was ten months ago...)

Hi Bobbi --

(plus I now realize the last post on this subject was ten months ago...)

This is an important philosophical idea, so the thread never goes away and people can add to it whenever they see it.

I've had posts erased, too, either by hitting "preview" or taking too long to create the message. I now copy my messages frequently while I'm writing them.



Scientists have proved that we act before we are aware of acting.

I've seen this said in conjunction with free will arguments, but I'm skeptical about how much light science can shed on the issue.

The reason is that I think the free will problem is fundamentally a philosophical question. Free will, to me, has to do with consciousness, and science has not been able to identify or explain that.

Consciousness may be an emergent property of the brain, but I think it would have to have the status of a material entity, rather than just a quality, to submit easily to scientific investigation.

A lot of what science says about brain states comes from the recent advent of functional MRI, of fMRI, which now allows scientists to see what the brain is doing over a stretch time. But I wonder if we've all gotten too carried away with this new technology. For example, when a pixel lights up when a person in an experiment thinks about this or that, that pixel represent something like a cubic millmeter of the brain. Such an area contains millions of neurons, so we still don't know just which neurons are signaling in response to what.

As a result, my thinking is that the strongest arguments for determinism will be the ones that rely more on the reasoning and logic of philosophy than on scientific discoveries. Scientific discoveries, especially the newest ones coming from fMRI, are fascinating. But once we take a second look at them, they don't actually tell us nearly as much as we thought the did at first. We learn new things about the cell every day, for instance, but very little of it has translated into better medicine.

I'm sorry about your mother. Alzheimer's is in my family, too. Again, philosophically speaking, the tragedy is that when one loses one's past, one also loses one's identity, maybe even what people refer to as "personhood" too. I've seen this happen myself and I hope we eventually will have medicines that can effectively control it.


P.S. There are over 800 members of this group. I'm surprised nobody else has responded to Bobbi's post.

Dear Tyler,

Is consciousness the brain or is it something else?

The scientific evidence part was more of an aside for me / not the central issue. We can see without “science” that there is no “now” and that the past and future are merely thoughts disagreed upon by people present at the same event ie; with separate interpretations.

Just because I do not believe in free will does not mean I believe in determinism.

To say someone is losing their past, for me, is to see the insubstantiality of existence. The past is invented, isn’t real in the first place. My mother invented a reality for a time of being sixteen, having a job, never wanting to get married or have children. That world was as real to her then as ours is to us now as is the baby's life to him/ her. The only difference is that, whereas people rarely agree since they see things differently due to their various conceptualizations and judgments, an Alzheimer’s patient will not agree with anything involving a shared reality with other individuals--this shared so-called "reality" we “think” we share is completely insubstantial, constantly disagreed upon and we are influenced in the subtlest of ways depending on innumerable influences beyond our control.

thank you for writing--

bobbi

Dear Bill,
Self-awareness, in my experience, seems very dependent on circumstances, just as you stated.

But is it “self-awareness” or is it that we come to accept concepts about ourselves, that we maintain them in order to feel stable?

Who is to say how much self-awareness we have individually? Who is there to judge the amount? EVERYONE, regardless of how they might be analyzed by others, believes they are self-aware, it seems to me.

Your commitment is admirable. But what created that commitment?

How can you say the more self-awareness we have, the more free will? My mother did EXACTLY as she pleased. She never felt so free, never less constrained by pre-determined factors.

Isn’t your commitment to others more of a behavior than an indication of a solid self you identify with?

If your loved ones expect nothing, you are nothing? Is this true?

I agree with your father: if we do not keep our word we are of little value to ourselves or others but what does this have with free will?

How can freedom make it more difficult to be aware of who you are? Who are you? Are you your actions towards others?

What you are implying in the last paragraph is that those who believe they have mental capacity have free will but those who don’t can’t have free will. But who is to say who has the mental capacity and who doesn’t. Who is the judge?

You speak of character and, of course, I do agree with you. This is part of the confusion. None of what you have written has very much to do with free will to me. I see what you’ve written as more an attempt at consistency, of seeing ones’ self as an object (as we all do) who must improve, be giving, be consistent. I believe these things are commendable and I try my best to adhere to these things as well but as much as I’d like to think I am a certain way, there are an enormous amount of holes and tons of rationalizations to fill them. But I am moving aware from free will vs. no-free will, I fear.

Thank you for writing,
Bobbi

Ultimately the free-will argument becomes almost meaningless when we acknowledge that despite the advances of science and causal relationships we are still a very long way away from truly knowing what our futures hold. Put simply our ignorance is our respite.

I will admit that this isn't entirely comforting for many of you here who have studied philosophy, however for many other people (i.e. those that have never pondered this problem to begin with) they will imagine that they are truly free and maybe that is enough.

I think Harry Frankfurt makes an interesting argument for determinism when he claims that we are only free when acting on 'second order volitions'. These are our considered thoughts and judgements. They are not our 'wants' but deeper still 'what we want to want'.

For example we may feel that we want to eat 17 bowls of icecream because we are upset and ice cream is delicious. This would be classed as a 'first order desire' and is similar to the simple desires of animals. It is impulsive, unconsidered, and primarily determined by a simple combination or hunger and/or emotional instability. According to Frankfurt this type of action would be deemed determined because we are effectively allowing ourselves to be steered by our most basic of desires.

The step towards a free desicion would be to ask someting along the lines of "do I want ti have this desire to eat 17 bowls of ice-cream every time I have an emotional upset?". Perhaps your honest answer will be 'yes' - and in this case i'd say 'go right ahead and eat it up', because you are acting freely. But more likely you will realise that you are acting upon a 'first order desire' that conflicts with your more considered personhood, the realm of 'second order desires'.

Quite often this sort of cognitive dissonance can leave people feeling very unfree even though they do not see their decisions as being determined. In reality they are a slave to their weaker, animal-like selves. They are denying their capacity to make a decision based on introspection and in accordance with their key values.

The 'hard determinists' might be quick to point out that even these decisions that originate from 'second order desires' (or 'second order volitions' - i use the terms interchangeably) are still determined by causality. This may be so, however is seems that they are originating from our our 'inner selves', our considered selves rather than our animalistic selves.

Perhaps the question isn't "are our lives determined" but "what are our lives determined by?". I see no problem with a life that is necessarily determined by my own considered choices (which are, strictly speaking, still determined). But I do see it very sad that some people may be determined by whims and arbitrary factors - metaphorically speaking these people are like flotsam in the ocean.

Andrew.

Andrew—I read all your comments/ am answering in one paragraph since I am not able to respond in long form—so these are my thoughts on what you write, esp. because I find it hard to write the word “determinism” since I feel very different from that concept even if writing this seems to be a contradiction. But what does science have to do with free will? How could we ever know what our futures hold? And what creates the thoughts? Who is in control of creating the thoughts? We stop eating the ice cream when we become aware of doing it. The animal-like self is the stronger. The mind is but imaginaton, perception, conceptualization. But then again, the animal body is made mostly of empty space.

Hi Bobbi --


Is consciousness the brain or is it something else?

Consciousness is not the brain. However, it is an emergent property of the brain.


Just because I do not believe in free will does not mean I believe in determinism.

I was just reading Andrew's post on that, too. It's not clear in philosophy that we have to choose one or the other. The question may present a false dichotomy, and some thinkers have proposed various forms of compatiblism that account for both.

*****

The role of past and future is the subject of a lot of philosophical reasoning. In your post, you seem to be reasoning from people with Alzheimer's to the conclusion that consciousness as such consists in purely subjective states. I question whether an abnormal state of mind can properly serve as a model for a normal state.

In any case, Descartes certainly uses the mind as his starting point. However, other philosophers such as Kant have argued that consciousness cannot exist at all without an objective reference to the past. I'm not sure what you mean by "insubstantiality," but idealism may be the right category for it, and you may like the arguments put forth by Berkley in favor of it.

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for answering. I am writing "you say" because I cannot find a way to create italics on this screen. Interesting discussion.

You say: Consciousness is not the brain. However, it is an emergent property of the brain.

What do you mean by emergent?

You say: I was just reading Andrew's post on that, too. It's not clear in philosophy that we have to choose one or the other. The question may present a false dichotomy, and some thinkers have proposed various forms of compatiblism that account for both.


The human brain splits up, forms into catagories, conceptualizes….but, ultimately, what are we capable of knowing through thought?


You say: The role of past and future is the subject of a lot of philosophical reasoning. In your post, you seem to be reasoning from people with Alzheimer's to the conclusion that consciousness as such consists in purely subjective states. Descartes certainly uses the mind as his starting point. However, other philosophers such as Kant have argued that consciousness cannot exist at all without an objective reference to the past. I'm not sure what you mean by "insubstantiality," but idealism may be the right category for it, and you may like the arguments put forth by Berkley in favor of it.


Neither the past nor the future exist anywhere but in the mind. I only used Alzheimer’s as a metaphor or example of the brain’s limitations. Of course consciousness exists only in purely subjective states. Consciousness CAN exist without an objective reference to the past but a “person” (as in: a person with a story, identity etc.) can’t.
“Insubstantiality” in that we try so hard to make ourselves feel solid, and many of us do it through conceptualization. There is nothing substantial about us.
“Idealism” has nothing to do with any of this. That is just another way to conceptualize things.

Hi Andrew --

I think Harry Franfurt's distinction between levels of volition is indeed vulnerable to a deterministic critique. Even though "wanting to want" is a higher level activity, that doesn't show that the wanting to want is a free act compared to wanting. It just kicks the can down the road a bit.

The more relevant question is whether people who live purely by impulse are any more determined in their thinking than people who think rationally. As you point out, it can't be said that they aren't in fact any less free in their decisions than the rest of us.

In this context, the most philosophically important problem is the one you state at the end --

But I do see it very sad that some people may be determined by whims and arbitrary factors - metaphorically speaking these people are like flotsam in the ocean.

Free will, if it exists, puts us squarely in the moral realm. It is true that people who allow their emotions to drive them this way and that experience their lives as puppets on a string. But if they have chosen to float along according to whim, they are nevertheless morally responsible for their actions. And emotional reasoning often leads to awful decisions. That is indeed sad.

Hi Bobbi --

What do you mean by emergent?

I mean that consciousness is epiphenomenal -- that is, a side effect, so to speak, of physical brain states, but not the states themselves.


...but, ultimately, what are we capable of knowing through thought?

Reality.


Consciousness CAN exist without an objective reference to the past but a “person” (as in: a person with a story, identity etc.) can’t.

I agree exactly about personhood and the past. But the consciousness possible without reference to a past would be an animal consciousness, such that of a dog or cat, as far as I can tell. So when I use "consciousness," I mean human consciousness because I don't think other kinds of consciousness possess free will, if free will exists. On the other hand, I've found that I can train my dog to do anything she already wants to do, so ...


“Insubstantiality” in that we try so hard to make ourselves feel solid, and many of us do it through conceptualization. There is nothing substantial about us.///...this shared so-called "reality" we “think” we share is completely insubstantial.

Because idealism questions the nature of what we take to be external reality, and you say idealism has nothing to do with this, then I take it that when you use insubstantial you're referring to our subjective states of consciousness. Am I understanding it correctly?

Hi Tyler,

You say:

"It is true that people who allow their emotions to drive them this way and that experience their lives as puppets on a string. But if they have chosen to float along according to whim, they are nevertheless morally responsible for their actions."

I would say that these people are only experiencing the perception of freedom due to their warped perceptions. Women (or men) in abusive relationships often claim that they are free to do what they like (although it seems to others that they are obviously being controlled). Although they 'perceive' that they are free their perceptions have been developed by somebodies will other than their own.

This is probably an overly extreme example but even consider the case of the consumer loyal to a certain brand of car. It is quite likely that their want for the car originated from a particularly clever marketing campaign rather than some sort of cost/benefit analysis. If this is the case I would like to claim that regardless of how free they 'perceive' themselves to be they are actually acting as minions of the car manufacturer. No more free than a dog on a leash.

I don't think that it is possible to 'choose' to float by on a whim and still remain free. I regard this claim as being synonymous with "I choose to submit the path of my life to arbitrary factors outside my control".

I suspect i've gone a little of track and had a rant here, but i'll finish with a quote from Mill and a quote from Hayek.

Whether he is free or not does not depend on the range of choice but on whether he can expect to shape his course of action in accordance with his present intention or whether somebody else has power so to manipulate the conditions as to make him act according to that persons will rather than his own. - Hayek. The constitution of liberty.

A person whose desires and impulses are his own - are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture - is said to have character. One whose desires and impulses are not his own has no character, no more than a steam-engine has character. - Mill. On liberty.

Andrew.

Hi Andrew --

I think the Hayek quote better expresses what I'm saying. People do perceive themselves as making a free choice when it's not as free as they might think. But in a similar vein, some people will also perceive themselves as puppets lacking any choice of the matter when the fact is that they are free agents. By "choosing" to float along, I mean that the choice is there even though they don't see it. And sometimes it's hard to decide when your "situation limit" (as Sartre puts it) becomes an insurmountable barrier to your freedom to choose.

Tyler,
How often do people even perceive themselves?
As soon as someone tells us something negative about ourselves (something we don't want to perceive) we drop them. We choose people to amuse us and feed us back a picture of who we wish to be. Whether floating along or feeling as if we make a choice, it is all an illusion influenced by "acceptable" or "unacceptable" "others"
I am truly at my "situation limit" so that must be taken into consideration.

Hi Bobbi --

I'm not sure we always dipense with people who don't flatter us or stick with those who do. That depends on how strong an influence others are on our esteem. Further, we can "perceive" ourselves through introspection, and our accuracy in doing so will perhaps be influenced by whether or not we think of ourselves as free agents.

Sartre's "situation limit" comes about in the context of a free will argument. You had earlier mentioned the insubstantiality of consciousness. One of Sartre's most fascinating books takes up exactly this problem. The long and the short of it is that human consciousness recognizes this insubstantiality and as a result, much of the drive in life aims at grounding ourselves somehow in material existence. Sartre calls this the pursuit of being. For him, it's the basic drive of all humans, displacing the sex drive, the survival instinct and Nietzsche's will to power. As to the free will aspect, Sartre's point is that the insubstantiality of our inner lives is the very thing that guarantees our free will, or rather our human freedom, and we should embrace our lack of substance rather than fear it.

Tyler,
I think we automatically think of ourselves as free agents regardless of our philosophical position. We have to act "as if" in order to find life tolerable, I think.
I did not mean to imply consciousness was insubstantial--I meant to state that "we"/ our existence/ self-image is insubstantial.
Nietzsche, despite his "will to power" does not believe in free will.

Bill,

Your post is too long and complicated with my comments interspersed between what you write for me to answer everything. I certainly can't argue everything because I see myself as acting, or, trying to act, as you do. I agree with Buber's "I-I" vs. "I-It" etc. but you write:

"Self-awareness is the ability to choose among optional concepts about ourselves."


"Optional concepts"? --and how real is our self-concept if others, most likely, don't agree that you (or I, as well, being as I try to act as you describe yourself as acting) are even doing what you think you are doing? ie; you may think you are a highly moral person, that you always do the right thing because you "try" to do the right thing but I'd be very surprised if all the people comprising your world of relationships agree that what you are doing is right since they have their own agenda.

Most of the time one is unaware of what is going on. I am certainly unaware of "who" you are or how you will respond to what I write. As I type this I am aware of my headache, I can feel my fingers moving on the keyboard if I focus, I am anxious to get my computer fixed since all my Word files were erased from this computer by a technician I sought advice from on the phone. I can choose to call up and report him to his superiors or I can take it to an "apple genius"--these choices are very limited and neither one of them may help me--if I've lost all of my writing, what will become of me and my self-image? (I am a writer)--I can't do anything about my headache, my bad mood. I think I will choose to take the computer in. I am on hold now and it helps me to answer this because I am so upset about my computer. So what? Maybe I should call the technician's superior. But I want my computer fixed more than anything I can think of right now. What if I call the superior and I find out he's known me for years and he hears my outrage that my files are gone? etc. I am just saying that even in this moment I feel I am peeking through a tiny part of life, having to make a decision if I want to meet a deadline for a paper I am writing. (I didn't make the deadline and I forget why I said I'd write it--maybe it is "meant" to be written--maybe I will learn never to make this sort of commitment again)

Very few things feel good in the moment, I'd say. Life is mostly drudgery.

The drug addict, being an addict is inherently not free. Neither is the person who is addicted to presenting a particular self-image or believing they are inherently a particular self-image.

How can you choose not to be who you are? You ARE who you are. You just choose to believe you are choosing it.
You say:

"To the degree I forget who I am, I become a stranger to them, unpredictable, unreliable, untrustworthy. All signs that I have either not really chosen to be who I am or I have lost sight of who I am."

Are you really a stranger to people important to you if you act unpredictably, unreliably or are untrustworthy? Or do they get angry and/ or question you (if you're lucky), or, (more likely) gossip about you to others in order to boost their own self-image?

As far as living up to self and others: what if those others don't live up to what you expect of them? Do you maintain the same "solid" "self-image" of yourself?

Life is very complex.

If you are able to maintain a stable way of being I'd count you very fortunate for it would mean you've never have had people deceive you, never flip out and say the wrong things which those "loved ones" refuse to ever forget, never receive rejection, foreclosure, loss of friends, loss of health, never have to face the fact of isolation due to the fact that you are unable to re-establish the self-image you created before you got sick.

What I mean to say is what you write feels to me to be written in a vacuum, as if you are constantly aware (as you wrote), not impacted by "what is done to you" vs. what you do in order to maintain an image.

Thank you for the interesting debate.

Kaput,

I agree with you that we have the impression of having free will. But we don't.

I agree with you when you write that we are not inherently any self-image. Yes. Addicts change their self-image not only through change in behavior but due to the support of others around them. I also agree that when we change things in ourselves, things in our lives appear differently.
I have a number of people who have acted without integrity towards me who are not strangers to me at all. I have also acted in ways I regret and my actions are known to others.
The story of the prodigal son is good enough of a way to state this case: the need for forgiveness. To not forgive is to believe in free will. To forgive is to realize nothing wrong ever took place. Love is neutral as far as I can see. Passion and enmity are emotions attached to the self-image. Love is a sense of oneness and in oneness there is acceptance and, for me, that acceptance includes lack of free will. “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.”

Bill—
I agree with your disagreements.
I was unclear.
I don’t even know what forgiveness is.
I used to be angry and surprised by people but now I just don’t think it’s worth it. If I say I forgive someone, I rarely mean that I spend time with them. I just don’t want the burden of carrying them around in my head all the time (which is what I usually do, regardless)
But just as a mosquito can’t help but bite you, a gossip can’t help but speak against you etc.

Neutrality is not indifference. When I love someone, I feel relaxed, neutral, accepted. That was a shocking discovery for me, actually: the way people who upset me take up a lot of my mental space but people who I love do not take up any space other than the space of loving them (heart) and/ or caring enough to communicate with them in a way which is mutually beneficial. That is my definition of neutral. Neutral meaning I can be myself with them, silent with them, honest with them. Perhaps neutral isn’t the correct word but I can’t think of another to express the feeling of clarity I feel when I am at ease with someone I love.

I don’t know about passion, but suffering has been what has caused me not only to be more aware but to go on endless searches to find some sort of “truth” (a word I find hard to use now)—so I agree with you there as well.

I don’t think love is voluntary unity. I think it is involuntary and that is why it is so precious--(it clarifies our lack of free will, actually, in my opinion). I think our individuality dissolves during what I think of as the first stage of love. That stage never seems to last since the brain is ever active and the heart is not. I don’t think we choose (with free will) who we love. I do think we choose commitment, though, and that commitment gets harder once the involuntary sense of unity subsides.

The way I usually write “Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do” is:
FORGIVE THEM??????????LORD?????WHAT!!!!????!!!FOR THEY KNOW????WHAT??????!!!????THEY DO????!!!?????
But I’ve gotten into a lot of trouble for that so I have stopped writing it that way.

Bill--
What did I write about "easy friends"?
I was talking about love being ease.
But re: "easy friends": yes, if we have and do what they, want we're in --but we'll be out if we fail to entertain.
A friend with weed is only better if you are not in need of a friend.
Choosing a way to be the "self" your "friends" want is, in my opinion, nothing short of self-betrayal. You may be "inventing" a self but the question is "who is this "you"?"
David Foster Wallace committed suicide.

Yes. An easy love is not a true love and an easy friend is not a true friend.
Yes. Romance is a temporary sense of oneness plus all of the cultural influences and personal fantasies.
You are right. We don’t have free will and so we have the illusion of choosing a self. We don’t have the capacity to invent one.
I’ve never experienced infinite options.
Some words from a poem I never finished:

The self
Is a process
No
One
Wants

The illusion of becoming is the cause of all unhappiness.

Why would lack of options make life a burden? Too many options can also make life a burden.
I don’t think “becoming” is an illusion. I just think it is a way of not being in the present moment. It is a way of never being satisfied. It is a way of creating “goals” rather than being Here Now—ie; I find it sort of **** the way people go out to lunch with you but answer their cell phones or send text msgs. throughout. This is the same idea, I think. There’s something more important, something “better” around the corner—best to talk to that in-person lunch-friend via text when having lunch with someone else…etc.
I take it back: “becoming” IS an illusion. We never get what we think we want. We have to have everything taken from us in order to see this.
I suppose we choose the arguments free will vs. destiny because of your last paragraph. The happier we are the more we think it is because of our own doing. The more tragedy we experience, the more we feel it must be fate.

We tend to think we deserve the good outcomes in our lives and don't deserve the bad. In its everyday use people often misapply the term deserve by not adequately accounting for external factors that enhance or restrict freedom of action.

Yes. I think where we focus our attention takes the greatest effort. Being in the present requires absence of thought and, thus, self. I think I might agree with you re: this being an act of free will. But I think maybe it is coming to a point, through destiny, where one begins to search involuntarily but necessarily.

Everything I regret feels like it was part of my free will.

I have no reason to regret what is predetermined.

Yes. We want fate to favor us. We unconsciously, or consciously, realize we are not in control. “It is not fair” because we thought our efforts or character were worthy of reward. We are waiting for a reward, yet thinking thoughts re: how we are in control, directing our attention to what is not in control which is the fact that we have no free will.

Historybuff93 wrote: ""But responsibility has to be included somewhere in this, because isn't one responsible for their actions, no one tells them what they should do, they have their own standards of beliefs."

I agr..."

Why is it that when people talk about others doing whatever they want, they always assume we are talking about crime? Do we all possess an innate criminality?

FREE-WILL VS. PREDESTINATION ?

For example:

One woman gives birth to three children. They all are brilliant and relatively healthy. They are kind and giving and their mother feels that, because of this, she is a good mother. She feels she is a good mother because her children are how she hoped they would be. Society honors her.

VS.

Another woman gives birth to an autistic child who has difficulty communicating and is very much removed from the nuances of human emotion. He is also obsessive compulsive and is hospitalized for anorexia but when he gets out is given a pill to help with his obsessions. This pill almost kills him; it causes him to go blind. The mother’s life is centered around her child, trying to help her child with his life but this mother is unable to communicate with others due to the cultural belief that we somehow create our children and / or our children are a reflection of how we are seen as a mother.

Where is the free will in this?

And if not here: where can free will be?

Was there any free will in those poor brainwashed fools who flew into buildings on 9/11?

i think comparing a developmentally normal child to an autistic child is out of context here. That is nature. In Life, everyone is provided differently and free will is how we act in any situation.

No. I’m comparing the mothers’ identities to the children. Whereas one mother claims free will because of its benefits to her ego to do so, the other claims predestination for there is no way she would ever put a child of hers through this.

It is the arrogance and sorrow of humans that they think they’re in control.

Bill, but if it turned out otherwise, the mother might have taken credit for it. She would not be called arrogant. And no one would say to the mother who is proud of herself as a mother because of the way her children perform in the world not to be proud. Our entire culture is based around people being proud of their actions if the actions turn out positively. The only tragedies turned into movies are those which end on a positive note for "man can do all things" etc.


A quote from Einstein:
"Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables and cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by a mysterious piper."
Whether those forces include random or probabilistic elements is irrelevant: the key word is 'control'. We don't control these forces -they control us. Hence there is no free will.

Jimmy,

No.

Tyler wrote: "Hi Chris --

This is an interesting question. Right now I'm reading a book (The Book of Disquiet) whose author writes from a deterministic point of view. So we see in it how life is experienced..."

Typically, Soft determinists, also know as compatiblists, do not think that determinism and "free will" are incompatible. You might want to check out Aristotle, Hume, Spinoza, and Hobbes. There are many contemporary philosophers who do a lot of work in soft determinism as well.

I would also suggest Peter Van Inwagen's book: An Essay on Free Will. He argues for incompatibilism ("free will" and determinism cannot be reconciled).

Discussions about free will are interesting, and I always make it a point to ask myself, what do I mean by "free will?" Free from what exactly. It is also important to note that many philosophers reject the notion of "the will," but still have things to say about freedom.

I would recommend O'Connor, Dennett, and Kane.

Hi Mike --

I question whether determinism and free will are actually incompatible, so An Essay on Free Will sounds like an interesting rejoinder to that.

I think free will is the case if a person's decision could have been other than what he actually chose, so that would be my working definition.

One factor in the free will debate is the nature of consciousness. I think it is non-material, and as a result it will be difficult, if not impossible, to explain it in scientific terms. I'm persuaded by Sartre's description of it in Being and Nothingness, which argues that free will is essential to any workable explanation of human consciousness.

Mike and Tyler,
We don't know when we're born. We don't know when we'll die. We are not in charge of our heart beat, our circulation, our digestion or the impulses coming into our brains. It has nothing to do with determinism. It has to do with the fact that we do not even know who or what we are.
When we dream, it feels real. When we are so-called "awake" it feels real.
If a brain surgeon touches particular parts of the brain with an instrument s/he can ignite memories, thoughts, visions. So what is real?
What is free will but another illusion?

Hi Bobbi --

If we had reason to doubt reality or our awareness of it we might think of free will as an illusion, but there would then be no existential basis for the doubt. An agent having independent access to reality might know if we're dreaming, but the agent himself couldn't be sure he wasn't dreaming. What we're left with is a regress of doubts which by itself warns of a flaw in such reasoning.

In everyday life we would never doubt that we were awake except in odd circumstances. The idea of an illusion can be held open as a logical possibility, but an endless array of thought experiments are logically possible and it would be necessary to state why that possibility is being kept open.

Tyler,
At what age did you start having "free will" and at what age will you be incapable of having it?
Why is it that all animals perceive "reality" in a different way due to their various senses or lack thereof?
Who is the "we" who would "never" doubt "we" were awake?

Hi Bobbi --

You're posing two questions. To your last questions I have to ask again why you'd hold that scenario open as a logical possibility in contrast to our daily experience.

To the first question I'd say that the first act of free will is the decision to focus your attention in one direction and not another. Animals don't have that capability as far as I know, and the first humans to achieve it began thinking in a recognizably human way. The loss of this ability, such as happens in dementia, would mean you no longer have free will.

Hi Tyler--
As you write re: dementia: the brain is not very stable. Much of what you write has to do with your particular capacity to delve into abstract thinking. I disagree with you when you write that free will is the decision to focus in one direction and not another because there are always multiple variables. We are only aware of the variables that refer to our self-concept which is self-created and self-perpetuated (and inconsistent) for as long as the brain allows that to be possible. And it's not only dementia that can stop this idea of having free will. It can be through drugs, illness and breakdowns etc. that our sense of a solid self that identifies with its decisions is diminished or destroyed.

Evan,
Thank you for the brilliant article.
The scientific experiments Sam Harris refers to re: our actions coming before our thoughts about them occur have been written about for a long time. He explains this in a way I am incapable of doing (through no fault of my own) (and I apologize for this poorly-written sentence--my inability to write a clearer sentence is determined by my intellectual limitations and the fact that I am rushing to an appt.)
It is somewhat of a mystery to me why people argue so vehemently in re: to "free will"--I believe it is due, in large part, to our dualistic thinking which causes us to think in either/ or terms. Determinism, fatalism is also invalid, as this article so clearly points out.
I am curious why you wrote "...I hadn't even realized this was a question." It seems to me almost everyone argues in favor of free will. On the simplest levels it is absurd to me how people ask for sympathy when things go "wrong" and demand, request or brag about etc. credit when they go "right"--
I would think it would be liberating to realize how mysterious consciousness is and that we are not "creating" our life to the extent most people think we are.
Thank you again.

Evan wrote: "Bobbi wrote: "Evan,
Thank you for the brilliant article.
The scientific experiments Sam Harris refers to re: our actions coming before our thoughts about them occur have been written about for a l..."

Think about it like this. Most people believe that physical laws govern the behavior of observable stuff. Most people also believe that we have free will -- in other words, that we have the power to choose and are not simply shoved around by the dictates of physical laws. How do you reconcile the two beliefs? Of course, if you don't believe in one or the other of the two, there may not be a problem for you.

Ricardo
Yes. It is non-sense. It is intuitive. I have many concerns as well. When you say "power"--what do you mean? My concern with this question has become an obsession due to events in my life. I am hoping to find some connections with others re: experiences I have had which make me feel certain there is no free will.