WHAT is free will?

Short statements are generally not sufficient for free will....

A prerequisite question is, Who has free will?

If one follows the scent of who one may arrive at the one following the scent.

Who finds who looking for who?

I know I've no free will,my wife doesn't allow free will round here.

We may think we have free will.But I think that if you could get some sort of fantastic computer,one that knew every tiny detail about the human condition(even stuff that we have no idea about).I sugest that it would be possible to predict every move and every thought an individual might have.

I know I'm straying into sci fi.but what I'm saying is we are just doing and thinking things as a result of our make up.No free will required just the illusion of free will

Gordy, if someone were to invent such a computer, I would hack into it and do exactly the opposite of what it predicted just to spite it. And I'm sure I wouldn't be alone in that.

It WAS a film, starring a WHALE. Now dead rip.

Free will is usually assigned to those "higher life forms" and implies some type of indeterminism. Some even point to the "randomness" of quantum mechanics. But neither one of these is required for an agent (individual) to possess free will. Quantum effects may work against determinism* but, contrarily, this does not necessarily point to the existence of "Free Will".

Free will assumes that the deciding agent at some point is capable of choosing courses of action or thought and at this point makes a decision chosen from at least two different camps or concepts. However both or all of these choices must be simultaneously available at the time the decision is made. Said decision comes from within some "Black Box" conceptual processor (The Brain) and is due to and under control of the agent and not "outside" sources. Problems arise, of course when one tries to set the boundaries within which that decision is said to have occurred.

Seems simple enough, we either have Free Will or not. Right? But whole libraries have been written about this. Mostly the problem seems to lie in the assumption that determinism is incompatible with Free Will, but this may not be so. Therefore some type of compatibilism (a mixture of Free Will and Determinism) may answer the question of the existence of Free Will in the affirmative.

"Lower" forms of intelligence are not immune to the debate. Take the example of a fish contemplating whether or not to take the bait on a fish hook. The same fish about to be snapped up by a net exhibits a different situation.

*Determinism: The belief that everything that happens in the universe is scripted--absolutely everything, therefore anything that happens or any events or decisions that occur are out of our control. The "script" was formulated and our fate, along with everything else, sealed at the conceptual moment of the Big Bang or beginning of the universe as we know it. This allows little in the way of moral responsibility and if true speaks towards the futility of, among other things, our legal system: If Free Will is non-existent then criminals cannot possibly be held responsible for their actions--neither can one take credit for one's "good" thoughts or decisions that lead to noble acts.

JM

Great!! Keep 'em coming!
I usually see this turn into a great debate - but let's hope not this time. I would REALLY like to hear you ALL to get your view on this.
And thank you all so far!
I believe we can get a fair repertoire in here!

Sure, there are boundaries to free will - but that is not to say that the fish about to be taken by the net doesn't have free will, it just has a tighter range of choices.

I've thought before about what it meant to be free in choice - that is, not to be bound to any one path. But I don't think that free will depends on constantly being free to choose, if that makes any sense. For instance, if you want to take a metaphorical approach, if a man is walking down a path, and the path goes in only one direction, he is bound to that direction. But if he comes to a fork in the path, he is free to choose either fork. As long as he remains at the fork, he is in a state of freedom - and as soon as he chooses which path to take he is bound again. So being free is really being indecisive - which to me seems to go against the idea of free will which I conceive as being powered by the choices you make, not your inability to make them. Thus "free will" is not referring to a state of being free, but to the ability to bind yourself to whatever you choose.

b-Computers can be programed to learn from mistakes, but they don't have free will.

d-Then no one would have free will, since we CAN'T redo choices.

f-There is no such thing as random. Everything can be calculated.

k-Then the desires would be the influence. I think it may be the ability to NOT follow our desires. Like when we desire one thing, but wisely choose something better. For example, investing money, rather than spending. Or on an ethical level something as simple as NOT stealing, or NOT hitting someone we're angry with.

The point isn't whether or not we can redo choices. The point is what we could have or couldn't have done then.

I agree with Ted Honderich
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/ted6.htm

Rufio the computer knows every tiny thing about you, it knows that you are going to hack into it.
You can't stop yourself because you've no free will

don't worry about the computer thing,I was just using it to illustrate my view.

Instead of a computer what if it was a really intelligent person with a big blackboard and a lot of chalk.What would you do then?

If I know what the computer knows I can do something other than what it knows. No matter what it knows. The point is, the moment you try to pin my "fate" to one path, I can take the other one instead.

I was just wondering:You know the way I think everything can be calculated?
What if you extrapolate that idea to its furthermost conclusion?
If you follow my line of reasoning,it would be possible to plot every life and blade of grass right till the end of time(whatever time is,but thats another discussion)
If these calculations were possible,it makes you wonder.whats the point?ie:if we know how its all going to end up, why bother?

If you believe that, there is no point.

This I've posted already in another thread, but it belongs here really.
This is a 'thought experiment' - it's not my invention, it's well-known.


Mr. Alpha from planet Centauri X came to Earth to teach us all about mind-reading. He has a machine which allows him to see the future decision a person is going to make. For demonstration, he set up an experiment.

In a room, there are two boxes. A transparent box A, and an opaque box B. A person is invited into the room, Alpha explaining:
"In the transparent box, as you can clearly see, is a 1000-dollar bill. Now the contents of the other box depend on what I've already read from my mind-reader : IF I saw that you will decide to take ONLY the opaque box B, you will find it contains two 1000-dollar bills, and you can keep that. On the other hand, IF I read that you will opt to take BOTH boxes, you will find that the opaque box is empty, leaving you with just the 1000-dollars from the transparent box. You can choose whatever you want, but remember that I already know your choice !"

With that , Alpha leaves the confused subject in the room.

You have already seen Alpha perform thousands of such experiments and he was always right.

So, you reason that you should take just the opaque box, and this is the only reasonable choice , since you'll get 2000$ . If you attempt to take both, you'll only discover an empty box and get 1000$. You've seen numerous such cases. He is 100% right.

On the other hand, greed suddenly kicking in , you realize that he'd already decided and had either put 2000$ inside the box or not, depending on what he saw in the machine, and had already left. Just you and the money! So it can't hurt to take both boxes, can it?

But wait, both lines of reasoning can't be right .

Whatever, can YOU figure out what you'd take?
Do you REALLY have a free will?

I would take both and get $3000. Predicting the most likely outcome given a set of assumptions is one thing, controlling the future is another. This is like schrodinger's cat. Whether you open the clear box or not, the opaque box will have the same number of bills in it.

You can't choose your actions but you can't choose the consequences. You still have free will to choose either box, but one way you get less money.

"Free will" is what some religions wants you to believe you have, but they still haven't answered what "reality" is. So free will without reality is meaningless.