Free will is nonexistent

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 09, 2008 Posts: 70

Well free will is not a stricter religious dogma however its one big problem for christians.
My first question is what is free will ?
Can you define it ?
How to test its existence ?

Well think about thus questions for one moment.

Well here is my answer free will is a bullshit tale write next to the sun going down (the sun is stationary and the earth rotates) + I use my hart to think (your hart is a pump nothing more) superstitious nonsense.

Let me explain if we conduct a experiment if something follows patterns and is influenced via past experience and the answer is YES this thing is absolutely deterministic if the answer is NO its random.
Nether one of thus choices can be named free will if determinism is true you are determined to act the way you do and god cant blame you for this , if you are random your actions are devoid of any rezone or connection with reality and you are blameless because nothing can affect your random movement. Even if you bastardize the 2 concepts together its not going to make sense if you are a deterministic machine that in determined circumstances activates its random number generator you where determined to activate it in this occasion and the result is complete randomness that is blameless.
And if you are a random creature that at random activates its determinism machine the activation of this machine is in random time intervals so you have no control over it and the result is completely deterministic so it depends on the data given with makes you blameless.

O and I would like to address the common bullshit answer to this question. Describing the set of potential positions for free will (you have the free will to chose ice cream or chocolate ) is a bullshit definition. If free will is defined for all the potential possibilities your definition is a definition of potential possibilities and not a alternative for determinism or randomness.

Graduate Thinker Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 525

You still failed to define free will. You can't begin to disprove free will until you tell us what your definition of free will is.

Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 6:44 am

Here is my take on it:
Imo, when people talk about free will, what they really mean is *consciousness*.

We can consciously choose what we want to do.

But - we tend to forget that our subconsciousness is probably the dominating part of our mind.

The subconsciousness develops throughout our life and it makes decisions of which our consciousness often is not even aware. It controls and regulates our movement, our thinking and everything else that we do to a major extent.
For example, when we talk, we don't think about which words to choose, they come to us "naturally", in other words, they are supplied to us through our subconsciousness.

In a way, we therefore have something that one can call limited free will.
The rest is an illusion.
For example, we may think that we can take a gun or a knife and kill somebody, but in fact, its impossible for most of us. Our subconsciousness (aka conscience) simply won't allow it.
There are a lot of things it doesn't allow us, like jumping from buildings or saying something we know is not true.

Also, in contrast to that, our subconsciousness can make us do things that we consciously may know are not right, but we still do them because our subconsciousness has such an immense control over us.

Just Arrived Joined: Aug 19, 2008 Posts: 1

"We can consciously choose what we want to do. " - Prove it please.

If we made an exact clone of this universe, I'm pretty sure I would still be "choosing" the exact same things. Don't confuse the feeling of choosing with actual independent choice.

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 09, 2008 Posts: 70

Cygnus wrote:

You still failed to define free will. You can't begin to disprove free will until you tell us what your definition of free will is.

I’m not defining it I’m asking for the logical definition.
I argue because free will is nether defined for determinism or randomness or a hybrid of both its fictional.
Can someone provide a definition and test of free will that it is different from determinism or randomness or a hybrid of them both ?

----

williamsharkey wrote:

"We can consciously choose what we want to do. " - Prove it please.

If we made an exact clone of this universe, I'm pretty sure I would still be "choosing" the exact same things. Don't confuse the feeling of choosing with actual independent choice.

Well Maxwell demon and determinism rule supreme.
If I might add that there is a brain damage type that stops patients from developing long tear memory and I did have the pleasure to meat one of them. The results are astounding the subject never changes his/hers neural structure and after losing concentration loses every information given to him/her. Its like a restart and after every restart given the same circumstances the patient gives the same answer , asks the same questions makes the same decisions.

You could say that the subject deletes his/hers temporary files and provides a excellent example of determinism.

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 09, 2008 Posts: 70

AliTheBandit wrote:

Here is my take on it:
Imo, when people talk about free will, what they really mean is *consciousness*.

We can consciously choose what we want to do.

But - we tend to forget that our subconsciousness is probably the dominating part of our mind.

The subconsciousness develops throughout our life and it makes decisions of which our consciousness often is not even aware. It controls and regulates our movement, our thinking and everything else that we do to a major extent.
For example, when we talk, we don't think about which words to choose, they come to us "naturally", in other words, they are supplied to us through our subconsciousness.

In a way, we therefore have something that one can call limited free will.
The rest is an illusion.
For example, we may think that we can take a gun or a knife and kill somebody, but in fact, its impossible for most of us. Our subconsciousness (aka conscience) simply won't allow it.
There are a lot of things it doesn't allow us, like jumping from buildings or saying something we know is not true.

Also, in contrast to that, our subconsciousness can make us do things that we consciously may know are not right, but we still do them because our subconsciousness has such an immense control over us.

Define free will .
Define consciousness.
Define subconscious.

And provide tests for determining the existence of thus definitions.

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 16, 2008 Posts: 78

carx wrote:

Define free will .
Define consciousness.
Define subconscious.

And provide tests for determining the existence of thus definitions.

How about this?

Please define free will.
Please define consciousness.
Please define subconscious.

Please provide tests for determining the esxistence of thus definitions.

Thank you.

Politeness and courtesy cost nothing.

BornAgainAthiest.

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 12:29 am

Well, what is subconsciousness ?
I think it is a system which is able to receive information through our senses, process it and instruct our body on how to react to that info.

To illustrate it, we can take a really simple organism which is only able to tell light from dark. Its "eye" receives information which it transfers to its uh... "brain", which then decides how to move the body according to the information. It is programmed to follow the light, because when it gets dark, it knows it hit a wall XD .

Because this lifeform isn't really able to learn, it will react to specific light ranges in the same ways. However, the more complex the organism gets, the more possibilities it has for reactions. The subconsciousness tries to choose those which it deems to aid to the lifeforms survival best.

If the lifeform becomes extremely complex, it develops extra functions like self-awareness, in other words consciousness .

What consciousness really is is of course extremely hard to define, but I believe it is a product of subconsciousness which enables us to not only react to perceived outside information, but also to process *internal* memory.

So, to sum it up: the subconsciousness reacts to the external world constantly in the same way it has "programmed" itself.
But the consciousness makes it possible to transcend it and reevaluate information in accordance to our self-awareness, etc.

For example: When I am hungry and meet the atheists nightmare, a banana, my subconsciousness tells me to eat it. But if I have decided to lose some pounds, I can consciously decide to pass.

However, ultimately consciousness is just a product of subconsciousness. It depends on it.
I agree that if I would for example make an exact replica of myself, it would make the exact same decisions given the same circumstances.
But this doesn't mean that the clone wouldn't be conscious of its choices.
Its consciousness still would be able to act in disagreement to its subconsciousness. And that's what I would call free will.

But I think its a fallacy to believe that free will is somehow random or completely independent from everything else - for this to happen our consciousness would have not only to be seperated from our subconsciousness, but also from *itself*, which is obviously nonsense.
But it is still free will even if its deterministic Wink

.

Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:21 am

Wikipedia on free-will wrote:

The contemporary philosopher Galen Strawson agrees with Locke that the truth or falsity of determinism is irrelevant to the problem.[4] He argues that the notion of free will leads to an infinite regress and is therefore senseless. According to Strawson, if one is responsible for what one does in a given situation, then one must be responsible for the way one is in certain mental respects. But it is impossible for one to be responsible for the way one is in any respect. This is because in order to be responsible for the way one is in some situation "S", one must have been responsible for the way one was at "S-1". In order to be responsible for the way one was at "S-1", one must have been responsible for the way one was at "S-2", and so on. At some point in the chain, there must have been an act of origination of a new causal chain. But this is impossible. Man cannot create himself or his mental states ex nihilo. This argument entails that free will itself is absurd, but not that it is incompatible with determinism. Strawson calls his own view "pessimism" but it can be classified as hard incompatibilism.[4]

The above sums up my position fairly well. In my opinion, contracausal free will can not exist.

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 09, 2008 Posts: 70

AliTheBandit wrote:

Well, what is subconsciousness ?
I think it is a system which is able to receive information through our senses, process it and instruct our body on how to react to that info.

To illustrate it, we can take a really simple organism which is only able to tell light from dark. Its "eye" receives information which it transfers to its uh... "brain", which then decides how to move the body according to the information. It is programmed to follow the light, because when it gets dark, it knows it hit a wall XD .

Because this lifeform isn't really able to learn, it will react to specific light ranges in the same ways. However, the more complex the organism gets, the more possibilities it has for reactions. The subconsciousness tries to choose those which it deems to aid to the lifeforms survival best.

If the lifeform becomes extremely complex, it develops extra functions like self-awareness, in other words consciousness .

What consciousness really is is of course extremely hard to define, but I believe it is a product of subconsciousness which enables us to not only react to perceived outside information, but also to process *internal* memory.

So, to sum it up: the subconsciousness reacts to the external world constantly in the same way it has "programmed" itself.
But the consciousness makes it possible to transcend it and reevaluate information in accordance to our self-awareness, etc.

For example: When I am hungry and meet the atheists nightmare, a banana, my subconsciousness tells me to eat it. But if I have decided to lose some pounds, I can consciously decide to pass.

However, ultimately consciousness is just a product of subconsciousness. It depends on it.
I agree that if I would for example make an exact replica of myself, it would make the exact same decisions given the same circumstances.
But this doesn't mean that the clone wouldn't be conscious of its choices.
Its consciousness still would be able to act in disagreement to its subconsciousness. And that's what I would call free will.

But I think its a fallacy to believe that free will is somehow random or completely independent from everything else - for this to happen our consciousness would have not only to be seperated from our subconsciousness, but also from *itself*, which is obviously nonsense.
But it is still free will even if its deterministic Wink

.

Well you mentioned a hire abstraction program/system on top of a simpler program/system . A good example is win 95 who is actually a program requiring the running of dos to function or a program requiring a build layer. I understand your definition however you described a communication conflict between the layers if this free will ?A communication problem constitute free will ? Haze windows 95 free will then ?

If you define free will to mean determinism it’s a synonym for determinism not a alternative so yes god can not blame you because he design you in the Christian believe system its like building train rails and giving the train movement and getting angry that the train moves along the tracks.

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 4:59 am

Well, DOS/ Win98 is not a really good example... Consciousness as I see it is indeed something like another layer above subconsciousness, but it's not that consciousness is necesserily more complex - it just has different functions. It is able to take information from the subconsciousness and manipulate it in completely new ways.
And Win98 can't really produce anything on its own because it requires a user to function, so it can't have any kind of will at all.

However, if they make a computer that is able to receive information through something like "senses" and process it on its own, then judge how to proceed accordingly, then it will have real intelligence. When it also somehow becomes self-aware, then one can say it will be conscious. By that point I would say it has free will.

I agree that this deterministic kind of free will isn't compatible with christianity, as far as I can see. But this is only one of the many things that make christianity logically impossible...

Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:40 am

I've noticed in discussions about free will it seems to come down to whether it exists or not. However, an important issue of free will is seldom discussed. Why do we feel it necessary to claim it important that rational agents (humans in this case) can independently exercise control over their actions and decisions?

In my opinion, this is important to us because we desire to see people who are socially deviant get what they deserve. If we begin thinking of human actions as cause and affect beyond individual control, then any harmful repercussion made becomes only more cruelty in the same vein. The typical Christian needs free will so the mythological cruel acts of their god can be absolved; otherwise the monstrous violence and destruction of this god becomes only senseless brutality.

Confident Learner Joined: Jun 09, 2008 Posts: 70

MockingGods wrote:

I've noticed in discussions about free will it seems to come down to whether it exists or not. However, an important issue of free will is seldom discussed. Why do we feel it necessary to claim it important that rational agents (humans in this case) can independently exercise control over their actions and decisions?

In my opinion, this is important to us because we desire to see people who are socially deviant get what they deserve. If we begin thinking of human actions as cause and affect beyond individual control, then any harmful repercussion made becomes only more cruelty in the same vein. The typical Christian needs free will so the mythological cruel acts of their god can be absolved; otherwise the monstrous violence and destruction of this god becomes only senseless brutality.

Basically YES I think I quote RD saying in a deterministic worldview we don’t need our inhumane justice system we simply heal the malfunctioning units. And god who is all knowing and the all powerful creator of us simply sadistically fucked up on purpose.

Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:15 am

Quote:

Basically YES I think I quote RD saying in a deterministic worldview we don’t need our inhumane justice system we simply heal the malfunctioning units.

In my opinion, humanity would be better served if we gave up on the ideology of punishment. A system that was designed to humanely modify unsocial behavior (or humanely prevent it when it can’t be modified) would hypothetically lead to less unsocial behavior then a system that uses harmful, punitive repercussion to solve it. We’ve been using systems involving punishment for thousands of years and we’re still exhibiting the same harmful, unsocial behaviors. I find it reasonable to suggest that at least some of our antisocial behaviors are the byproduct of harmful repercussion by authorities being seen as just and good. This leads to an overall social acceptance of using intentional, harmful actions at the personal level as an appropriate problem-solving tool.

Graduate Thinker Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 525

Nietzsche: Do not trust those in whom the desire to punish is strong (so much for being the Nazi Party philosopher!).


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