Do you have free will?

Admin wrote:Have you ever made a decision that was entirely your own? That is, a decision that was not directly impacted by external or internal influences? What would such a decision look like? Are humans the only creatures with free will (if they have it)?

Rombat wrote:Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by internal influences, because that seems to me to be influences that come from within you. Like independent thought. So I'm either really not understanding the question or you're asking if someone can choose something without thinking about it and without being guided to it by external influences, which to me doesn't really seem like a choice, just randomness.

Rombat wrote:Randomness is not free will though. That's just randomness. Separating oneself from one's BRAIN is ridiculous. It seems entirely ridiculous to me to say internal influences mean you have no free will. It probably means you only have at best a semi-random (view random number generators for example of semi-randomness) event, but to say just because you can think you don't have free will is a bit ludicrous.

Rombat wrote:But if it weren't for internal factors we wouldn't be able to do ANYTHING. This is my problem with the discussion being made here. It's saying thinking is not allowed for free will. This makes no sense because without thinking there couldn't be free will. It's impossible to do something with 0 thought (internal influence) involved. Even if it's something controlled by instinct (breathing, blinking, sneezing, etc.) our brain is still thinking to do it (even if we're not actively controlling it).

I'm not even talking about whether we have free will or not, I'm simply saying how this is phrased this isn't even something to think about, it's already defined as no. There is definitely a discussion we can have about free will (although it really has already occurred in the "are we free" thread) but as long as internal influences are on the checklist of disallowing freewill we have no discussion.

Eclipse wrote:
We're in agreement, that the answer is implicitly "no" from how it's being defined. So how would you prefer it be defined (without it going back to "Are we Free?)?

Rombat wrote:

Eclipse wrote:
We're in agreement, that the answer is implicitly "no" from how it's being defined. So how would you prefer it be defined (without it going back to "Are we Free?)?

Personally I find this to be the exact same idea, just with adding the word will, and see no point to this being a separate discussion

So I'm going to let this thread die off, because we're just going to say the same thing as the free will thread. I believe that nothing is completely per-determined you believe everything is, and our beliefs certainly aren't going to change, so really no point to this discussion unless there are others who have something to say, or you have a definition that you feel is significantly different from the "free" thread and doesn't explicitly exclude alternate opinions.

Boricua wrote:Of course we have freewill. We were created with it.

Eclipse wrote:

Boricua wrote:Of course we have freewill. We were created with it.

Then "god" doesn't know everything. The cannot coexist.

Rombat wrote:

Eclipse wrote:

Boricua wrote:Of course we have freewill. We were created with it.

Then "god" doesn't know everything. The cannot coexist.

Maybe he can know all possible outcomes?

But then he wouldn't know which you'd definitely choose, thus would not know everything just all possible paths. So from a religious point of view I'm going to have to let you win this one.

ILoveInquiry wrote:For those suggesting that there is no free will at all - how would you respond to this: A person commits a crime, and the defense lawyer says "My client was determined to commit this crime, his/her situation and up-bringing led to this outcome, therefore my client should be set free."

Gamov wrote:

ILoveInquiry wrote:For those suggesting that there is no free will at all - how would you respond to this: A person commits a crime, and the defense lawyer says "My client was determined to commit this crime, his/her situation and up-bringing led to this outcome, therefore my client should be set free."

Criminals shouldn't be set free because they commit crimes and that are detrimental to society. Yes, a person's situation and up-bringing may have been some factors of the action, but what they did is against they law and I believe it is in our self interest to prevent it from happening again. Freedom and responsibility may be illusions that we claim exist because we do not know exactly how the human brain works, but they are none the less vital to society.

Arguing that a criminal could not help himself is true. It doesn't follow however that he or she should be set free. We don't want the person to perform the same act again so we should opt for rehabilitation; change the factors which are currently understood to motivate a person's actions. Or, in the case of a genuinely hopeless sociopath, kill them (the Hitler example).