Why I don't believe in 'free will'

The fact people merely believe that God exists or is present in the universe is not even remotely evidence that he exists - why would it be different for free will? And if we need evidence For God's presence/existence first why wouldn't we for free will too?

Secondly:
Determinism='free will' is impossible.

I still know of no evidence that we actually make decisions other than the fact we (at least those who believe in free will) merely believe we do.

Because there's already evidence for physics and the mechanics of the universe. But no evidence (as far as I know) that we can influence that other than what we are doing simply because of it whether we like it or not.

We are bound by the same things as far as I know; either we are determined like the rest of the universe (determinism) or we're not (indeterminism) and we're more random.

I agree with you, but people assume that we have free will because it appears that we do have conscious control over our actions. This of course could be an illusion but I'm just saying. Compare it to the illusion that the sun revolves around the earth.

Not necessarily; many philosophers (Dan Dennett for example) make good arguments for compatibility.

I assume that when you say that you know of no evidence that we make decisions you're talking about conscious decisions.

It is clear that we make decisions all of the time.

The question is whether or not we make them consciously or sub-consciously. I don't believe in separating the self from the brain.

How do you insist that the experience of having free will is not evidence for free will? Surely, experience of a thing is the greatest evidence we could ever have of it.

There is no evidence that the world is determined.

Also, random doesn't imply what you seem to think it means. Random is a measure of our ignorance of a system. Even random coin tosses can create regular patterns.

Because if you don't have free will then your experience is all the same yet you are still using it as evidence for it.

This 'experience' doesn't point either way (How could we tell the difference?) - so I still need a reason to believe there is free will by default.

Well, if my experiences are the same then why does it matter? You're talking about a "perfect illusion" that we could never see through. I don't understand why a "perfect illusion" is so undesirable. If you give me a $100 bill that's a "perfect illusion" then I can spend it just like a "real" $100 bill in every way and the only difference would be that one $100 was printed by the government and the other was printed in some crook's lab. However, other than this innate historical fact, there's no difference. It seems to me that saying we have a "perfect illusion" of free will is the same thing as having free will. If there is no difference then what's the difference?

We have wills and there is no evidence that they need to be free from anything. That sounds like evidence for free will to me.

Well, it just depends if you are interested in whether we have control over our own reactions or if we don't - we just commonly believe we do.

All I'm saying is there's no evidence for 'free will' as in there's no evidence that we control our own actions and decisions themselves, whether we believe we can or not.

Yes they assume it. It's a baseless assumption as I said. It's circular reasoning - not an argument at all.

We can't tell the difference as to whether the appearance of free will would look any different with or without it. Belief in free will, or belief in free will because of the 'appearance' of it is not evidence of it.

"I believe in free will because it just seems like there is free will" or "I believe in free will because people commonly believe in it and that is all the evidence we need, the fact is, we DO believe it" - etc, arguments such as them are not arguments. They are purely circular and not remotely evidence.

That's like "Belief in God is evidence of God" - a belief itself is not evidence for the truth of a belief.

The point is you can't tell the difference between if it's an illusion or not if you believe in it. But you need a reason to believe in first, you need evidence of it first.

Just like how I will assume that those who believe in God are simply experiencing their own subjective illusion of it, not that he actually exists. An illusion for those who believe I shall assume first - because I need evidence for the truth of something first, the reality of something first.

I need evidence for free will first just as I need evidence for God's existence first. Until I know of any evidence for either of those things I will safely assume that those beliefs are both just an illusion to those who believe in them.



I am familiar with Dennetts argument and I agree will all that I've heard.

The fact is he's using a completely different definition. The 'free will' he speaks of is just freedom itself...not exactly 'free will' - not as how most define it anyways.

He definites it as 'evitability' or 'avoidability', the opposite being 'inevitability', when something is inevitable - or unavoidable. A 'kind of free will' that he says is equally compatible with determinism. Go figure. He's just trying to keep both sides happy I think. I don't think of it as 'free will' myself because it's totally compatible with determinism...so that's such a different definition it's not really the same thing at all.

Yes. It's the illusion of decisions, the illusion of choice. We have the avoidability, the evitability to do different things. We can be given a 'choice' as in different 'options' or 'decisions to make' - but we don't actually have a choice, a decision or any option in the matter of what choice or option we pick of decision we 'make'.

We have decision processes yes. And we call these 'decisions' - but 'decisons' often carries the connotations that this was deliberate, that we 'chose' it that way. That we decide on our own decisions other words. So it's just a matter of semantics here - I try to be as eloquent as I can but the matter of free will can be confusing because of this very thing. The difference betweenm a choice and a 'free choice. We all have choices, and we all make decisons. But do we have any choice in the matter what they are? Do we have any decision over what decisions we make?: No is my answer. No evidence that we do. Whether we believe we do or not.

We have choices. But no choice in what choice we choose.

I have said it in this philosophically confusing way lol: 'We have options, but no option over which option we opt for.'

I have no reason to believe it isn't enitrely automated like the rest of physics. We have more awareness, we're very complex and we're biological, we are comparatively 'more intelligent' (by our own common definition) than anything else on this planet (many say so anyway lol) - but none of that is evidence that we have free will, that it isn't just automatic physics - whether determined or indetermined, whether fixed or bouncing about more. Whether like a standard pair of dice (indeterminism) or like a pair of rigged dice (determinism).

The fact we are aware is not evidence of free will. It's evidence of neurological complexity, yeah. But the fact we are capable of believing in free will isn't evidence of it of course. Why would it be? It isn't evidence for anything else. Belief is not evidence for the truth of a belief - that's circular reasoning.

I think it is just instilled in us. I think we are 'wired wrong'. There's no evidence for the truth of free will, that I know of anyway.

EvF

You just said there is no difference. How can we have the same experiences yet in one case be in control and in the other case not be?

I experience making decisions. There is no evidence that they are controlled by anything other than me.

Why isn't that evidence that I control them since you can't provide evidence that they are controlled by something else?

Because in one case we control our own actions and in the other we are conscious, complex biological robots that don't have any choice in our own actions - we just believe we do.

Once upon a time there was a dualist. He believed that mind and matter are separate substances. Just how they interacted he did not pretend to know-this was one of the "mysteries" of life. But he was sure they were quite separate substances.

This dualist, unfortunately, led an unbearably painful life-not because of his philosophical beliefs, but for quite different reasons. And he had excellent empirical evidence that no respite was in sight for the rest of his life. He longed for nothing more than to die. But he was deterred from suicide by such reasons as: (1) he did not want to hurt other people by his death; (2) he was afraid suicide might be morally wrong; (3) he was afraid there might be an afterlife, and he did not want to risk the possibility of eternal punishment. So our poor dualist was quite desperate.

Then came the discovery of the miracle drug! Its effect on the taker was to annihilate the soul or mind entirely but to leave the body functioning exactly as before. Absolutely no observable change came over the taker; the body continued to act just as if it still had a soul. Not the closest friend or observer could possibly know that the taker had taken the drug, unless the taker informed him. Our dualist was, of course, delighted! Now he could annihilate himself (his soul, that is) in a way not subject to any of the foregoing objections. And so, for the first time in years, he went to bed with a light heart, saying: "Tomorrow morning I will go down to the drugstore and get the drug. My days of suffering are over at last!" With these thoughts, he fell peacefully asleep.

Now at this point a curious thing happened. A friend of the dualist who knew about this drug, and who knew of the sufferings of the dualist, decided to put him out of his misery. So in the middle of the night, while the dualist was fast asleep, the friend quietly stole into the house and injected the drug into his veins. The next morning the body of the dualist awoke-without any soul indeed-and the first thing it did was to go to the drugstore to get the drug. He took it home and, before taking it, said, "Now I shall be released." So he took it and then waited the time interval in which it was supposed to work. At the end of the interval he angrily exclaimed: "Damn it, this stuff hasn't helped at all! I still obviously have a soul and am suffering as much as ever!"

Doesn't all this suggest that perhaps there might be something just a little wrong with dualism?

It's all physics.

Well as an atheist, I agree with you on the whole . Dennett's definition is a reconceptualization, but I don't think it's fair to say that he's doing it to please both sides. He may have reconceptualized it to please himself, but I don't think he cares about whether or not everyone agrees with him.

It seems to me that, as in this story, there could be some magic potion that would destroy our free wills while leaving everything else intact. If that is the case then why should I care? Just like the man having his soul destroyed changed nothing, how then will having my free will destroyed change me? If not at all, then why do I care? Either you are mistaken in thinking that free will is important or you are mistaken in thinking that it changes absoutely nothing about our experiences.

The laws of nature, physics, are just descriptions. Descriptions don't control anything. They merely describe.

Well that was just my opinion for why. I think I said "I think"? Sorry if it wasn't clear.

I just wonder that because of like the 'Brights' thing...where he's trying to get atheists to call themselves something else because it will be more pleasant, for both sides, etc.

I'm an indeterminist but I don't believe in traditional 'free will' (as in the ability to exercise control over ones own actions and decisions), I don't believe in behavioral 'free will.' Because quantum indetermininsy doesn't imply 'free will', being more random doesn't imply free will. It doesn't give evidence to free will at all. I still know of no free will.

I mean...if someone commits a crime for example - were they 1. just on autopilot, because their brain was just 'thinking that way' and their body just went along with it...in which case they couldn't have done anything different - they couldn't help it.....or 2. Can they somehow use their brain to deliberately influence itself what it is thinking and 'deciding'... to influence what they are doing deliberately...so they could have done different?

In and of itself at least if someone has no choice in the matter, why would you want to punish them if they can't help it? It would be wrong to do so yeah? I mean to act as if they can help something if they can't?

EVF,

let me reiterate, and expand on, what i posted here: http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/blogs/satan/304-free-will-conversation.html


leaving aside the phrase, the placeholder, 'free will': i have to ask, how can you say 'I do not know of any evidence that we control our own actions'?

if you didn't 'choose' (based on your own reasonings) to post your comment above, then who or what did?

if you 'chose' to comment, then acted on that choice, how did you not exercise self-control, self-determination, self-efficacy, agency?


now: 'free will' is a notion i find dumb on every level: it stinks of the theological

but: 'agency' (nothing more or less than the capacity to choose and attempt to act on choice) is nothing like 'free will' but seems to preserve all the qualities attributed to 'free will'


you ask -- obliquely -- for the evidence 'that we control our own actions'

i can only point to myself, my own agendas and goals (which often have nothing to with satisfying impulse or appetites) and say: insofar as the broad parameters of my own flesh allow, insofar as the way reality works allows, i self-determine, i choose, i decide

this is not an exercise in 'free will', but rather an exercise of my 'self' as agent (synonymous with 'agency')

you say or imply the self-efficacy i promote is an illusion: where, then, is your evidence?

my evidence is -- i admit -- subjective, probably anecdotal, and yet i assert it

the burden, it seems to me, is on you to either disprove my (and presumably, your own) sense of agency, or, to provide an evidence for the illusory status of the sense 'we control our own actions'


let me offer an example to illustrate...

i have coffee in a small shop...i note a woman seated at another table: she's attractive in the way i like...a cascade of psychological/physiological events occur within me and i become 'erect'

it's very true: i have little to no control over the ********, but -- certainly, EVF -- you must agree i have complete control over what i do with, or about, the ********

off the top of my head, i can:

1- walk over to the woman, chat her up, attempt to score some time with her

2-follow her from the cafe', wait for my moment, assault her, haul her into an alleyway, and have my way with her

3-do nothing...sip my coffee, read my paper, occasionally take a gander at the beauty, and enjoy the sensation of being alive

4-do something else entirely

surely: any choice i make (from the above list, or others we all could devise) is predicated on 'me' (my experiences, my sense of 'self', my capabilities, the functions/failings/limits of my flesh) but unlike a dog (bio-automation, consciousness as conduit for tripping off impulse and appetite) whatever i choose is the result of 'me'


now: what am 'I'?

an animal, of course, but a sapient animal...sapience, of course, is not about being wise, but about being capable of wisdom, and wisdom is nothing more than the ungainly hybrid of fact (what can be observed, measured) and belief (real or fiction)

i argue that sapience (not a quality to be teased out, but a function of the human individual) is the keystone of agency...call it 'I'ness or 'ego' (in stirner's, not freud's, sense)

hell: call it 'free will' if you like

whatever you call it: the 'evidence' -- no matter how subjective or anecdotal -- is overwhelming that 'i' choose, you choose, we all each of us 'choose'


so, i submit: if the science tends to dispel 'agency' as i see it (agent causation), then the science is wrong

the first great error of science is the tendency toward a greedy reductionism

reductionism is a fine way to conduct science but not so great a way to understand the individual, idiosyncratic, human

that is: science can explain how light enters the eye, but -- to date -- has failed to explain the focused gaze extending out from the eye

that is: science explains the parts and pieces and the process, but has yet to explain the 'me', the 'you', that occurs when those pieces, parts, and processes are 'together'

it is the 'me', the 'you', as agent (agency), that acts as 'cause' and not just link in a causal chain

I feel like I'm being redundant but determinism does not mean, or imply, fatalism or inevitability.