even on small scale. I feel its like. if we offer food to someone who is hungry they have no free will because we knew all that or like change it to the food you offered is something they like and you know they can’t resist and are not on a diet or you know they are on a diet and have an iron will so they will refuse it or you know they are stuffed to the gills and will refuse it. none of that removes the agency of deciding to me.
If an action is 100% predictable based on inputs (hunger, preference, brain state), then it’s not a choice it’s a reaction. Just because we feel like we are choosing doesn’t mean we are. We are just witnessing the result of a complex biological equation that has already been solved by our neurons. What do you think?
If i am presented with a choice, say beer or wine, I feel like I’m making an educated choice based on the circumstances and my current personal state.
If we were to rewind time to that exact choice with the exact same parameters I’d choose the same beverage over and over again. It’s my free will, but I’m completely conditioned to choose it based of the environment, my DNA and my experiences.
If there were to be some quantumancy happening that made me choose differently in one of those scenarios, that doesn’t make the argument for free (controlled) will any stronger. Just that there’s some uncertainty at play.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter, we still need to good people accountable for their actions.
I’d pick the same drink every single time, and that makes sense to me as my choice under those conditions. It feels like compatibilism: free will as acting according to my own motivations, even if those are fully determined.
But honestly, I’m still leaning toward determinism being mostly true our actions seem rooted in genetics, environment, childhood coding, and brain states that we don’t ultimately control. We can overcome patterns through therapy, awareness, etc., which gives a sense of freedom, but even that overcoming desire/ability is probably caused by prior factors too. So I’m not 100% hard determinist (because practical change feels real and meaningful), but I’m not fully compatibilist either— it sometimes feels like redefining ‘free will’ to fit determinism.
Quantum uncertainty adds some unpredictability, but as you said, it’s just randomness, not ‘willed’ control, so it doesn’t rescue libertarian free will.
At the end of the day, I agree accountability is crucial we still need to hold people responsible for actions to keep society functioning. How do you personally draw the line where ‘conditioned choice’ becomes ‘free enough’ for moral responsibility?
Yeah I agree that free will and determinism aren’t mutually exclusive. Just because free will doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that everything is preordained.
It’s a hard question. For example with children I try to assume that they’re doing the best(only thing) they can and judge their actions from that perspective. With people who are mentally ill or addicts I lean that direction as well but honestly it’s hard with adults.
I truly believe that Putin and Trump are doing the only things they are capable of but I cannot forgive their actions despite them being victims of determinism, just like everybody else.
Society needs to hold people accountable, not because it’s fair, but because it could possibly prevent others from acting similarly.
I cannot forgive their actions despite them being victims of determinism, just like everybody else.
Personally, I feel that’s a different topic. Being determined does not mean your actions can’t be morally judged.
Just because a dangerous animal like a bull might have it in their nature to trample people in the streets does not mean we should just tolerate it and let it go rampant. This behavior should be prevented. And if the cause of the behavior is a human mental/behavioral pattern, then we, as a society, should seek to correct those patterns in whichever way possible. Sometimes this means jail.
However, the punishment is only a means to an end… the goal is to prevent future damage, it’s not a vengeful vendetta out of spite/hate… it would make no sense to punish the same way a child who you know will learn / has learnt their lesson than an animal that you know cannot change their ways and the only solution would be keeping it away from society.
Yeah, I really can’t forgive them either. It’s not only about deterring others from doing the same it’s also because we have empathy. In normal brains, the empathy circuits (like mirror neurons and prefrontal areas) work as they should, so we feel the pain others cause but for some people that system is broken or wired differently from the start. Still society has to hold them accountable.
I disagree. basically its impossible to have free will if it has a structure and process. Its like because your actions are driven by your senses, logic, and feelings its not free will. But that is the nature of being. There could be no free will with that because its defining anything that comes from anything as not being free will. If a god exists he would not have free will because he exists and therefore has being and therefore has mechanisms of action. Its not an argument against free will its an argument about free will being the result of some spiritual mumbo jumbo like a soul.
I feel you are defining “free will” as any form of “will”.
What would be the difference between having a “deterministic will” and having “free will” in your view?
If you think that every decision that involves our own willpower is “free”, even when that decision is 100% predictable/determined and one cannot really arbitrarily choose to “will” it differently, then calling it “free” is meaningless, since it does not really require the freedom to choose differently.
Maybe. Again I don’t think that having a mechanism for our being. Our will. Does not make in nonfree will. This argument of if enough is known, even if its impossible to have all that knowledge, means no free will is flawed because the premise is based on an impossibility. Again to me its an argument against a mystical spirit or soul type free will but I think we can have free will that emerges from complex systems. To me its like. You eat because your hungry therefore you did not make free will choice to eat. Its like the logic is that there can be no free will unless we are random and crazy and don’t use our reason and situation into account with our decisions. We make different decisions because we are different entities and that to me is free will. I mean I also feel we define ourselves by our actions so in effect by the decisions we make.
I agree that “having a mechanism for our being, our will, does not make in nonfree will.”
The one thing that makes it non-free is the lack of any freedom (given the exact same circumstances) of choosing differently.
So if you think our actions are 100% determined by external factors, and that we don’t have the freedom to choose differently, then I would say that’s not what normally is considered “free”.
I honestly don’t see this being for/against “a mystical spirit or soul” one way or the other… one can believe in a deterministic God/soul (like for example, Spinoza’s God), or one can believe in free will without it being spiritual at all… whether there’s “spiritality” is not really directly related, imho.
We make different decisions because we are different entities and that to me is free will. I mean I also feel we define ourselves by our actions so in effect by the decisions we make.
To me, we being different entities is differentiation, not free will. Two pieces of rock can also behave differently when thrown because they might have different distribution of their mass… does this make the rocks free?
Also, I think we are way more than just our actions… but if we were to really define everything based on the actions that it takes as a consequence of their circunstances, then you might as well define a rock by the way it bounces as a consequence of its velocity. Does that make it free?
well its an argument against in that she discounts it in her view. everything if if could be known then you could compute the outcome. I have been thinking about this and im not sure I accept her premise. I think she is saying if you knew the exact starting conditions and all the laws the universe perfectly you could know that we would come into being and what we would do. At first I was thinking she was more saying if you knew everything up to us now which is kinda different. I don’t think knowing the exact initial state and all the laws would allow for knowing anything but the next step. I do think we see randomness or what we can only describe as randomness in in the way our universe works such that you cannot really predict more than the next step. If you see the particle go through the slit then you know where it will land. Going from the start and looking into the far future or even having all the information to now won’t necessarily allow for exact knowldge of what will happen 100 years from now. Even with perfect everything. I do actually think what we see in quantum physics may be a part of our decision making and our effectively free will. We call it random but if that is what it is then maybe randomness is needed for free will.
Note that “knowing the next step” implies knowing “everything” about that next step.
So if you accept that, given knowledge of “everything” about a given state, it’s possible to know “everything” about the next state, it follows by pure logic that this can be iterated. Otherwise, you would have to say that it’s not true that the knowledge of “everything” about a state makes it possible to know “everything” about the next state.
So either you agree that one can go forwards beyond the second state or you don’t think we can know “everything” about that second state, or you don’t really think that knowing “everything” about a state really guarantees that you will be able to predict the next one.
But saying that you can perfectly know one step and not the next one seems logically incoherent to me. Not when you are talking about a theoretical perfect system that follows that initial premise. If there are factors that affect going from state+1 to state+2 then why would those factors not play a role when going from state+0 to state+1?
You would need to introduce variables that are not known (like say… random factors), which would already mean that you do not really agree with the initial premise (since the initial premise implies that there are no unknown variables). And if there are variables that are unknown… why would you assume that state+1 (the first step) is predictable to begin with?
Thats I good point. I was thinking since its the next step of a confined area that you could not get the rest but what it really does it make it just ludicrously impossible its like okay if you have some something larger than the universe that can take in the universe you can get the next step in once place but now you need an infinte of them or infinte time to get all of the specific things. Or virtually infinite. Its like stacking infinities on infinities to make it not free will. It just does not work for me.
Our genetics and environment (especially childhood experiences) basically program us and shape our brains. A lot of what we do stems from those early codes we were given. But we can overcome them through therapy, awareness, new experiences, etc. That said, if the very desire and ability to overcome those patterns weren’t wired into us from the start (genetics, upbringing, etc.). That’s a different story.
Thats what I kinda mean. Its like we have a mechanism of being and yeah you go back to if you know the path of every particle in the universe right up to you you could maybe 100% say what will be but its something that can’t happen. Because we and nothing we know of can 100% say what decisions we will make. Because we can be shocked, awed, or laugh at what we would see as crazy decisions. Effectively everyone has free will in my book.
even on small scale. I feel its like. if we offer food to someone who is hungry they have no free will because we knew all that or like change it to the food you offered is something they like and you know they can’t resist and are not on a diet or you know they are on a diet and have an iron will so they will refuse it or you know they are stuffed to the gills and will refuse it. none of that removes the agency of deciding to me.
If an action is 100% predictable based on inputs (hunger, preference, brain state), then it’s not a choice it’s a reaction. Just because we feel like we are choosing doesn’t mean we are. We are just witnessing the result of a complex biological equation that has already been solved by our neurons. What do you think?
If i am presented with a choice, say beer or wine, I feel like I’m making an educated choice based on the circumstances and my current personal state.
If we were to rewind time to that exact choice with the exact same parameters I’d choose the same beverage over and over again. It’s my free will, but I’m completely conditioned to choose it based of the environment, my DNA and my experiences.
If there were to be some quantumancy happening that made me choose differently in one of those scenarios, that doesn’t make the argument for free (controlled) will any stronger. Just that there’s some uncertainty at play.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter, we still need to good people accountable for their actions.
I’d pick the same drink every single time, and that makes sense to me as my choice under those conditions. It feels like compatibilism: free will as acting according to my own motivations, even if those are fully determined. But honestly, I’m still leaning toward determinism being mostly true our actions seem rooted in genetics, environment, childhood coding, and brain states that we don’t ultimately control. We can overcome patterns through therapy, awareness, etc., which gives a sense of freedom, but even that overcoming desire/ability is probably caused by prior factors too. So I’m not 100% hard determinist (because practical change feels real and meaningful), but I’m not fully compatibilist either— it sometimes feels like redefining ‘free will’ to fit determinism. Quantum uncertainty adds some unpredictability, but as you said, it’s just randomness, not ‘willed’ control, so it doesn’t rescue libertarian free will. At the end of the day, I agree accountability is crucial we still need to hold people responsible for actions to keep society functioning. How do you personally draw the line where ‘conditioned choice’ becomes ‘free enough’ for moral responsibility?
Yeah I agree that free will and determinism aren’t mutually exclusive. Just because free will doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that everything is preordained.
It’s a hard question. For example with children I try to assume that they’re doing the best(only thing) they can and judge their actions from that perspective. With people who are mentally ill or addicts I lean that direction as well but honestly it’s hard with adults.
I truly believe that Putin and Trump are doing the only things they are capable of but I cannot forgive their actions despite them being victims of determinism, just like everybody else.
Society needs to hold people accountable, not because it’s fair, but because it could possibly prevent others from acting similarly.
Personally, I feel that’s a different topic. Being determined does not mean your actions can’t be morally judged.
Just because a dangerous animal like a bull might have it in their nature to trample people in the streets does not mean we should just tolerate it and let it go rampant. This behavior should be prevented. And if the cause of the behavior is a human mental/behavioral pattern, then we, as a society, should seek to correct those patterns in whichever way possible. Sometimes this means jail.
However, the punishment is only a means to an end… the goal is to prevent future damage, it’s not a vengeful vendetta out of spite/hate… it would make no sense to punish the same way a child who you know will learn / has learnt their lesson than an animal that you know cannot change their ways and the only solution would be keeping it away from society.
Yeah, I really can’t forgive them either. It’s not only about deterring others from doing the same it’s also because we have empathy. In normal brains, the empathy circuits (like mirror neurons and prefrontal areas) work as they should, so we feel the pain others cause but for some people that system is broken or wired differently from the start. Still society has to hold them accountable.
I disagree. basically its impossible to have free will if it has a structure and process. Its like because your actions are driven by your senses, logic, and feelings its not free will. But that is the nature of being. There could be no free will with that because its defining anything that comes from anything as not being free will. If a god exists he would not have free will because he exists and therefore has being and therefore has mechanisms of action. Its not an argument against free will its an argument about free will being the result of some spiritual mumbo jumbo like a soul.
I feel you are defining “free will” as any form of “will”.
What would be the difference between having a “deterministic will” and having “free will” in your view?
If you think that every decision that involves our own willpower is “free”, even when that decision is 100% predictable/determined and one cannot really arbitrarily choose to “will” it differently, then calling it “free” is meaningless, since it does not really require the freedom to choose differently.
Maybe. Again I don’t think that having a mechanism for our being. Our will. Does not make in nonfree will. This argument of if enough is known, even if its impossible to have all that knowledge, means no free will is flawed because the premise is based on an impossibility. Again to me its an argument against a mystical spirit or soul type free will but I think we can have free will that emerges from complex systems. To me its like. You eat because your hungry therefore you did not make free will choice to eat. Its like the logic is that there can be no free will unless we are random and crazy and don’t use our reason and situation into account with our decisions. We make different decisions because we are different entities and that to me is free will. I mean I also feel we define ourselves by our actions so in effect by the decisions we make.
I agree that “having a mechanism for our being, our will, does not make in nonfree will.”
The one thing that makes it non-free is the lack of any freedom (given the exact same circumstances) of choosing differently.
So if you think our actions are 100% determined by external factors, and that we don’t have the freedom to choose differently, then I would say that’s not what normally is considered “free”.
I honestly don’t see this being for/against “a mystical spirit or soul” one way or the other… one can believe in a deterministic God/soul (like for example, Spinoza’s God), or one can believe in free will without it being spiritual at all… whether there’s “spiritality” is not really directly related, imho.
To me, we being different entities is differentiation, not free will. Two pieces of rock can also behave differently when thrown because they might have different distribution of their mass… does this make the rocks free?
Also, I think we are way more than just our actions… but if we were to really define everything based on the actions that it takes as a consequence of their circunstances, then you might as well define a rock by the way it bounces as a consequence of its velocity. Does that make it free?
well its an argument against in that she discounts it in her view. everything if if could be known then you could compute the outcome. I have been thinking about this and im not sure I accept her premise. I think she is saying if you knew the exact starting conditions and all the laws the universe perfectly you could know that we would come into being and what we would do. At first I was thinking she was more saying if you knew everything up to us now which is kinda different. I don’t think knowing the exact initial state and all the laws would allow for knowing anything but the next step. I do think we see randomness or what we can only describe as randomness in in the way our universe works such that you cannot really predict more than the next step. If you see the particle go through the slit then you know where it will land. Going from the start and looking into the far future or even having all the information to now won’t necessarily allow for exact knowldge of what will happen 100 years from now. Even with perfect everything. I do actually think what we see in quantum physics may be a part of our decision making and our effectively free will. We call it random but if that is what it is then maybe randomness is needed for free will.
Note that “knowing the next step” implies knowing “everything” about that next step.
So if you accept that, given knowledge of “everything” about a given state, it’s possible to know “everything” about the next state, it follows by pure logic that this can be iterated. Otherwise, you would have to say that it’s not true that the knowledge of “everything” about a state makes it possible to know “everything” about the next state.
So either you agree that one can go forwards beyond the second state or you don’t think we can know “everything” about that second state, or you don’t really think that knowing “everything” about a state really guarantees that you will be able to predict the next one.
But saying that you can perfectly know one step and not the next one seems logically incoherent to me. Not when you are talking about a theoretical perfect system that follows that initial premise. If there are factors that affect going from state+1 to state+2 then why would those factors not play a role when going from state+0 to state+1?
You would need to introduce variables that are not known (like say… random factors), which would already mean that you do not really agree with the initial premise (since the initial premise implies that there are no unknown variables). And if there are variables that are unknown… why would you assume that state+1 (the first step) is predictable to begin with?
Thats I good point. I was thinking since its the next step of a confined area that you could not get the rest but what it really does it make it just ludicrously impossible its like okay if you have some something larger than the universe that can take in the universe you can get the next step in once place but now you need an infinte of them or infinte time to get all of the specific things. Or virtually infinite. Its like stacking infinities on infinities to make it not free will. It just does not work for me.
Our genetics and environment (especially childhood experiences) basically program us and shape our brains. A lot of what we do stems from those early codes we were given. But we can overcome them through therapy, awareness, new experiences, etc. That said, if the very desire and ability to overcome those patterns weren’t wired into us from the start (genetics, upbringing, etc.). That’s a different story.
Thats what I kinda mean. Its like we have a mechanism of being and yeah you go back to if you know the path of every particle in the universe right up to you you could maybe 100% say what will be but its something that can’t happen. Because we and nothing we know of can 100% say what decisions we will make. Because we can be shocked, awed, or laugh at what we would see as crazy decisions. Effectively everyone has free will in my book.