Is free-will an illusion?

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

the matter is not close anywhere in the world

The matter which is closed is Tomr's objection to my demonstration, and as you yourself have linked to refutations of his objection, you presumably understand that it fails.
If you have some other reason to suppose that there can be no willed actions in a non-determined world, what are they?

As an aside, none of this is relevant to the definition of "free will" which you have stated to be the one whose reality you deny. So, are you now denying the existence of free will under a different definition? If so, what is that definition?

1 Reply

@ughaibu,

No ! I don't have any other definition as you well know, I just happen to disagree with true randomness being proved or provable...that is enough to make my point ! I respect your view you are entitled to have it, for one at least your are committed to make a point which is more then most are willing...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

You,

Quote:

to disagree with true randomness being proved or provable.

I agree with this thesis. From all the possible options for any one person - especially in very well developed civilizations, it would be impossible to predict randomness if it's beyond the constraints of jobs or lifelong habits.

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@cicerone imposter,

I can say I accept and believe in complexity and the unpredictability that follows it, but there is a big step to cross from there to the conception of true randomness...true randomness as I see it would require full knowledge of the whole of reality to be accessed as true or false...Gödel's incompleteness theorem stands in the way of such claim to ever be possible...guess I don't need anything else to make my point on ontological claims on this matter, except perhaps to re state that we have no good reason to believe Nature is irrational...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

No ! I don't have any other definition as you well know. . .

Well, as I have never heard of any realist about "free will"- as defined by you, you are not denying free will as those who are realists about free will take it to be. So your posts addressed to me, as a realist about free will, are irrelevant.
Unless you deny the reality of free will under standard definitions, you are not part of the discussion.

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

I just happen to disagree with true randomness being proved or provable

And this too is irrelevant. If it were the case that there could be no willed actions in a non-determined world, then either we never perform any willed actions or it would be established that we live in a determined world. As there are many intellectually capable people who are aware of this, yet hold that we do perform some willed actions and do not live in a determined world, it is quite clear that none of those people think that there is any reason to imagine that there can be no willed actions in a non-determined world. Either you can give a reason or you can't, and your beliefs about "true randomness", whatever you might mean by that, do not constitute reasons.

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@ughaibu,

Boy, that's a whole post of gobblygook that I've ever read on a2k.

Mr. Green

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@Krumple,

Quote:

When it comes to human action, thoughts, or feelings there is always a limited number of choices.

True, Krump. However the number of determinants is infinite, many if not all of them acting to within a few milliseconds of the decision

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@dalehileman,

True; even within the individual, he/she chooses to act or do something from habit or do something that's out of the ordinary. Those choices cannot be predetermined by anyone - not even the actor.

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@cicerone imposter,

Well put, Cis. Even his reversal at the last second made in order to demonstrate his free will will be labeled as determined, the number of factors entering into it very large if not infinite

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@dalehileman,

Just look at what happens when anyone is hit with an unexpected crisis. Who knows what they will do? Nobody.

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@ughaibu,

Quote:

If it were the case that there could be no willed actions in a non-determined world, then either we never perform any willed actions or it would be established that we live in a determined world.

And just how exactly would you propose we can establish for sure there could or could not be free willed actions if not by clarifying what we mean with free in the context of willing ? The matter at hand is to analyze if those willed actions, because there are in fact willed actions, are free choices and what we mean with "free choices" which over the ages as been proven a very obscure business...aside conscious constrains there are unconscious constraining factors in the very process of willing A or B, which in turn means there are reasons to will what we will and to act the way we do...establishing in this simple way a loose sense of what "causation" means we are immediately confronted with causes beyond the control of the willing agent alone...in turn naturally follows that the context of free willing ends up being a common sense pragmatical reference to lack of direct constrains to the materialization of the willing process into an action that follows and not a reference to willing itself as being free...if willing is the business of having reasons to act the way we act willing by definition cannot be free in any meaningful sense ! To put it in another way, we HAVE reasons to chose what we chose but we don't MAKE UP reasons...obviously it follows those reasons stretch far beyond our willing process once the causes for those reasons in willing are not established by the agent but rather recognized by the agent ! There is an unjustified appropriation of the "causal" factor through awareness which can only be explained by the very illusion of having a separate self ! Its awareness of perspective that creates such illusion and thus quite naturally the very impression of free willing !

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Put another way, how does anyone determine who will be Medal of Honor winners before the fact?

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@cicerone imposter,

You see that's about prediction...the fact that you can't predict what will happen, that is, to have knowledge with certainty, is not a constrain to a determined world onto itself, in fact it only means that a great deal of complexity stands in the way of you knowing for sure what will happen...the discussion of free will taking place here instead analyzes what in the hell "free will" could possibly mean aside the common sense approach we all have to it...just look at the damn expression..."will" itself means having reasons/causes to wish...so how on Earth can we stick "free" right behind it ?

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Agree; it's "free" to the extent of all the constraints that all of us live with. It's never "all free."

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@ughaibu,

Quote:

Bringing this up to date; Tomr posted his proof at the above three fora. On each he was told why he is wrong, by varying numbers of posters and with varying degrees of patience. In one case, after it was pointed out that he was wrong, and why he was wrong, nobody thought fit to indulge him further. As Tomr's proof doesn't demonstrate his conclusion and as that conclusion is obviously false, there was always a danger that his thread would just be ignored, certainly I think it would have been a waste of time posting it at a site like PlanetMath for that reason. However, I'm surprised at how little indulgence he received at the sites chosen, as I've often thought that I'm rather short of patience when dealing with deniers, but the opposite seems to be the case.
Anyway, here the other posters were more patient. But eventually, in the face of Tomr's obstinance, they began speculating that he's a troll and the thread was closed. He faired even worse here. After he ignored the correction of his views, by three or four posters, for the second time, his posts were deleted and his account closed. In short, he was banned.
It should now be absolutely clear that Tomr's objection, to my demonstration that willed actions are possible in a non-determined world, cuts no ice. His argument fails, it fails obviously and trivially, as was pointed out in several posts, and not just by me, on this very thread, before opinion was sought elsewhere. I consider this matter to be closed.

It is all true I lost. Not one poster agreed with my position. Though I still feel my position is correct. I have to admit that the way things stand now the vast majority of willing commentators believe passionately that a natural number cannot be represented as an endlessly long string. I will not argue that they can be so here any longer because it would be a pointless exercise as you could point me to any number of respected opinions who would disagree with me.

I would just say that if the majority was always right, Ughaibu would definitely be wrong on this thread. The point of the natural number argument was to show that uncountable numbers - sets of numbers greater than the set of natural numbers - do not exist. I will not argue that anymore here. And though I still believe that the concept of a hierarchy of infinities is ill concieved, it is hard to argue with a mob who has the power to lock your thread out and ban you from a site regardless of how well you articulate your arguments or polite you act in return.

Also note that I am not the only person to ever exist with these views. Galileo famously wrote on this topic saying that infinities cannot be compared in the manner that is currently being done. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_paradox

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@tomr,

Still, to clarify the point for us lazy bums without the need to scan the entire thread, can anyone else explain in short sentences of common words how numbers possibly enter into the idea of free will

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@dalehileman,

Ughaibu says that he can pick numbers. That he can put them behind a decimal point (only so that they are not natural numbers) and continue to pick them endlessly. Such a number he claims can be picked by a person differently than by some other mechanical number generation process. Because the number he creates is one number out of an uncountably infinite total number of options that makes the number mathematically random. Why a number like .5555... cannot be said to be mathematically random by this logic is something I do not know. I am sorry but this is the best I can describe by what he means as I remember the argument from before.

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@tomr,

Do you understand factoring and statistics?

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

Quote:
If it were the case that there could be no willed actions in a non-determined world, then either we never perform any willed actions or it would be established that we live in a determined world.
And just how exactly would you propose we can establish for sure there could or could not be free willed actions if not by clarifying what we mean with free in the context of willing ?

I'm impressed that you managed to quote me. More progress. However, you still managed an irrelevant reply by inserting a word that is conspicuously absent from the excerpt that you quoted.
What you denied is that there can be willed actions in a non-determined world. Obviously there can be free actions in a non-determined world. So, if there can be willed actions in a non-determined world, then there can be freely willed actions in a non-determined world.
The rest of your waffling about "reasons" and "cause" is irrelevant to standard definitions of free will.

1 Reply

@tomr,

tomr wrote:

I have to admit that the way things stand now the vast majority of willing commentators believe passionately that a natural number cannot be represented as an endlessly long string.

Nobody "believes passionately"! It's a straightforward consequence of the maths.

2 Replies

Is free-will an illusion?

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