Free will versus Determinism

[BOS Hydra]

If chemicals in your brain have no effect on free will, then they have no effect on free will. Saying that they cannot force you to do things implies that they cannot force you not to do things either. When I say something is blue, do I also have to say: It is not red, it is not green, it is not yellow... ?

*Edit: And by the way, wtf is wrong with being biased, anyway? You sound like a relativist when you say that. I'm biased towards truth and against bullshit. Tolerance of views/actions you feel are incorrect is almost as bad as doing those things yourself. I don't mean you have to go out and shoot people you disagree with, obviously that would constitute first use of force, but you don't have to make their immoral lives easier either.

Sorry, bad choice of words on my part. No, there is nothing wrong with being biased towards truth. And pointing out every possible exception is a waste of time. What I was trying to say is it is important to make sure to be clear towards the audience you are confronting. What I mean is..

Oh hell, I think my exposure to the general public is getting to me. I am used to people not knowing what they are talking about, and correcting them. I will just assume everyone here is intelligent enough (please don't prove to me otherwise) to know how to not get caught into infinite misunderstandings.

All I was worried about was the sake of clarity. Obviously we are not going to walk into a mousetrap because chemicals tell you so, unless your a masochist or suicidal or both. Pointing out the other extreme can, however, shed some light to the audience in case they are stuck in their ways or overlooked that point (I am not accusing anyone.)

I'm not very tolerant of false ideas, however I try to make people understand my ideas first before I correct them or settle with a stalemate.

[Calthrop]

Robots? You mean like nano-bots injected into a persons brain that rewire them to walk into giant mousetraps?

[Kushan]

Robots? You mean like nano-bots injected into a persons brain that rewire them to walk into giant mousetraps?

You have frightened me.

[Petyr Baelich]

Robots? You mean like nano-bots injected into a persons brain that rewire them to walk into giant mousetraps?

No, I mean a discussion we have every couple months about the possibility of humans creating robots or computer programs with free will. At what point does the illusion of free will become indistinguishable from the real thing, etc. I'd say more but I really don't want to have that discussion again, yet.

[BOS Hydra]

One day, when the cosmos align, mousetraps will spawn in front of everyone on the planet and we will walk into them, and it will be the free willed robots' fault.

[Tolthar Lockbar]

I just skimmed over this thread, so I hope I don't repeat anything.

So far, people have seemed to say why determinism is self refuting, but neglecting to really say what freewill IS.

First of all, one has to remember that some entity's properties is not the sum of its parts. That is, all the parts of my body do not contain life alone, but together, life can come into existence.

Freewill is an attribute/property of our consciousness. This is why people argue freewill so much I think. We can't show physically why consciousness exists, but we know it does. If one denies consciousness, then, well, thats another topic all together, and pretty evasive of an individual.

Consciousness allows us to think of things on will. Thats an important point, I'll say it again: consciousness allows us to think of things on will.

That is the essence of freewill. It is the ability to think or not to think at will. If I eat a ton of food until I get fat, it is obvious that I am consciously avoiding a fact about reality: too much food makes us fat.

Thinking all the time does take much mental energy, and time; so this is a good reason to not thinking about impossibilities (like the possibility of someone knowing everything!)



Oh, and just because I know the question will arise, I'll ask it myself. "What is the cause that causes us to think?" Look up, I explained that. Its a concept called freewill. All one has to do is will themselves to think. Remember knowledge is gained through induction, and induction is used to understand reality. Freewill is merely observed to exist, and then given a name.

If at some point you find something that contradicts reality, check your premises, something is wrong. Reality is the ultimate arbiter in contradictions.

EDIT: spelling. I always put 's's on the end of exist as a habit of SQL

[Tolthar Lockbar]

Robots? You mean like nano-bots injected into a persons brain that rewire them to walk into giant mousetraps?

No, I mean a discussion we have every couple months about the possibility of humans creating robots or computer programs with free will. At what point does the illusion of free will become indistinguishable from the real thing, etc. I'd say more but I really don't want to have that discussion again, yet.

omg omg omg, here I go!

At any point you talk about giving a robot freewill, you will start talking about biology. Programing can not contain freewill because it is deterministic. But if someone could grow a brain, then that maybe could potentially create freewill. This is like saying, "dude, I'm gonna program a heart and print it out!"

[Ciaras]

One view I've taken from this (well the first few posts) is that the "universe" approach fails to actually take all variables into account. IF you could conceivably map out every variable that would affect an outcome of an event, you still have no method of determining the outcome of a RATIONAL being. You can come up with a probable or likely outcome, but you can NOT 100% determine the choice that will be made by a rational mind that is capable of rational and irrational thoughts (i.e. the steel trap example...a rational mind might logically decide to avoid the trap despite the item inside...but the choice still remains that they could choose any number of options).

I will concede that in a a given situation there may be a finite number of outcomes (if I tell you to pick either an apple or an orange from the table, you can't take a grapefruit...its simply not there). But predicting the outcome to a 100% (leading towards a partial confirmation of pre-determinism) is impossible. With a rational being involved, there is still a measure of deviation just based on choice.

Even with the amount of outcomes being finite and the ability to look at past performance as an indicator of future choices, predicting the outcome of an event is still, at best, using a rational process to examine the "why" of a rational choice. Just because I've taken the same street to work for the last year, doesn't mean that it was pre-determined that I take that street...it involved a personal choice at a point in the past...and I still have the free-will to choose a different path...or none at all.

[Airiek]

What are your opinions of the field of behavioral genetics?
The idea is that certain genes affect certain behaviors, such as addiction and even violence, among other things. Now I know this doesn't negate free will, but it certainly affects it. Do you think that the study of this field, as difficult as it is due to the complexity of behavior and the influence of development can perhaps allow people to choose to manipulate their genes? and what about genetics in general - (this may be going off topic) - or more speciffically manipulating the genes of an unborn child, or even a newly formed zygote before it is even starts multiplying, as would happen if some king of manipulation would occur, would it be moral to change the genes of an unborn child? what if it was to remove certain genes making certain behaviors more likely? if, since an unborn child is not a living being (which makes it moral to perform abortion) is it moral to make changes to the biological development since it can't be considered a person yet?
Based on objectivisms view on abortion i think that it would be ethical to manipulate the dna of a fetus, but what about genes pertaining to behaviors (if they can even be considered to affect a persons personality/free will/thinking significantly,)?
I have crazy mad scientist schemes to unload but I already know which one would be immoral if made to work (as opposed to respecting free will, where they wouldn't work).

[Petyr Baelich]

Genetic behaviorism does not affect free will in any way. Even if you are born with a crippling genetic condition, you still choose the actions which define your life. A man may be born unable to move without using a wheelchair, unable to speak without using a computerized device, and unable to work in any field requiring manual labor. He chooses to become either a burden to a welfare state.... or Stephen Hawking.

[Kushan]

He chooses to become either a burden to a welfare state.... or Stephen Hawking.

This.

And while I'm quoting things;

That something happened to you is of no importance to anyone, not even to you. The important thing about you is what you choose to make happen - your values and choices. That which happened by accident - what family you were born into, in what country, and where you went to school - is totally unimportant. - Ayn Rand

Obviously a person with severe disabilities is going to have a harder time. Personally, I don't think having to work harder is a bad thing. Life isn't fair - so why worry about how easy others have it? What matters is that you get to where you want... and working harder for it will make your victory all the sweeter.

[Enamoredmango]

Sorry to interrupt here, but it occurs to me now that not one thing Airiek has said so far has made one tiny bit of sense. I feel like I'm listening to Bob Dutko when I read his posts, meaning he is taking a lot of unrelated things out of context and loosely associating them into an incohesive argument. This is especially apparent in his first post.

Or, in layman's terms, his arguments suck, and he needs to stop talking.

And also, Airiek? Saying that his post seemed emotional is hardly a valid defense, since the reasoning made sense.

EDIT: Accidental necromancy. Sorry!

[Ciaras]

Its not interupting when the conversation took place 6 months ago.

[Armon Ral]

Sorry for the necro, but I just had to have my say on this topic

Of course there is no free will - it's just an illusion. We have a consciousness that can think, ponder and make decisions - but every decision we make is the product of a myriad of factors that have accumulated in our brains during our lifetimes. Everything you do, you could not have done differently. You may be deluded by the idea that you can take matters in deep consideration before you make your decision. Nonetheless your present mind is a product of your accumulated experiences, and by the time you make your decision, the outcome of your considerations is still a product of pre-existing premises.

This does not, however, mean that your life is deterministic - at least not anymore than that of a molecule of air flying in the winds.

[Oleksandr]

Of course there is no free will - it's just an illusion. We have a consciousness that can think, ponder and make decisions - but every decision we make is the product of a myriad of factors that have accumulated in our brains during our lifetimes. Everything you do, you could not have done differently.

Therefore, you had no choice but to say what you just said, thus you had no option to follow reason or just blind emotion, so your answer must be dismissed as just another sound made by the wind.

P.S. Just another example of what happens when you attempt to deny an axiom: one ends up refuting oneself.


http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/free_will.html

Because man has free will, no human choice—and no phenomenon which is a product of human choice—is metaphysically necessary. In regard to any man-made fact, it is valid to claim that man has chosen thus, but it was not inherent in the nature of existence for him to have done so: he could have chosen otherwise.

Choice, however, is not chance. Volition is not an exception to the Law of Causality; it is a type of causation.

[Armon Ral]

I'd rather say that choice is the outcome of causality.

Free will is an axiom just because we believe that we have free will. Ayn Rand says that a thought is not involuntary, and that man has to initiate it. But the initiation of a thought is itself a victim of causality - what we've been taught, what we've been led to believe, our experiences in the distant past as well as in the immediate moments preceding said thought, all create a thin red line that leads to the creation of this thought.

This is just one step further than objectivism - to be truly objective is to realize that we are but clumps of matter that act under the laws of physics - then it is evident that there is no mysterious 'self' that the 'self' itself can control, only the 'self' that you are brought up to be taking your life experience into account.

[Emedan]

You are confusing determinism and causality.

Causality is that the same causes produce the same effects. It means that the universe behaves in a way that is accessible to reason.

Determinism, however, is the theory that everything has a cause. This is circular and obviously false, unless of course you believe in God. Modern physics do not support determinism at all.

[Oleksandr]

Causality is that the same causes produce the same effects. It means that the universe behaves in a way that is accessible to reason.

It's actually even more abstract than that: a thing must always behave according to its nature. Or in poetic form by Ayn Rand:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/identity.html

A leaf cannot be a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
...
The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it . . . . The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature.

[reteo]

Wow... I know I'm going to take a bit of flak for this, but reason is just as much an impulse as any other activity; granted we only see it in human beings, but then that's what allowed us to become more dangerous than any other predator in history.

Determinism is just another word for predictability, and let's face it, it seems many people want to predict the world around them, but they refuse to believe they are predictable. Then they use this dichotomy to argue that there's some amorphous "free will" floating inside the brain controlling it so that they don't have to come to terms with the fact that they are simply an animal with a unique (but purely physical) impulse that can override other impulses.

Yes, I'm on the side of determinism; until you prove that there's some magical ghost that pulls the strings, I will continue to know that free will is just an illusion of the unique reason impulse that humans have wired in the electrochemical machine inside their skulls.