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I get a kick out of the Rush song with the line "I will choose free will."
There's something of a logical dilemma there: if you don't have free will, you can't choose it. On the other hand, if you do have it, you can't NOT choose it, because you already have it.
Is this one of those paradoxes like, "this statement is false"?
I don't know. The concept of free will is a headache to me. On one hand I'm able to type this by no other's will but my own. On the other, my fascination with this subject compelled me to. Did I really exercise free will by coming here? According to determinism, no. Chemicals and past influences led me here. My brain's obsession for completion is making me finish typing this when I could log off the site and carry on with my day. No will of my own. Just my physical body pulling the strings. Except I am this body full of chemicals, memories, and neurological processes. How does having these things cheapen my free will? It's questions like these that gives me a headache.
Anyway, I'm open to further discussion about this if anyone cares to engage.
I don't know. The concept of free will is a headache to me. On one hand I'm able to type this by no other's will but my own. On the other, my fascination with this subject compelled me to. Did I really exercise free will by coming here? According to determinism, no. Chemicals and past influences led me here. My brain's obsession for completion is making me finish typing this when I could log off the site and carry on with my day. No will of my own. Just my physical body pulling the strings. Except I am this body full of chemicals, memories, and neurological processes. How does having these things cheapen my free will? It's questions like these that gives me a headache.
Anyway, I'm open to further discussion about this if anyone cares to engage.
I pretty much agree with you. If we have free will it is in some way that I am incapable of figuring out.
A lot of people think that they would do something different than someone else did. But to me that is impossible.
Take a student that does poorly in school, for example. Obviously some students are naturally better at learning than others. Interests play a large part in this. But people are not in control of what interest them. I think science is neat and the fact that to me, learning about science is enjoyable, will help me study more and take the time to learn the material. If you don't like science, it will be more difficult for you to put in the time to learn the material.
O.k. This doesn't mean that if you don't like science you will automatically get an F. But something or someone will have to compel you to put in the extra effort to get a better grade.
Let's say your parents push you or threaten you. This may be the push you needed to achieve a better grade. Let's say your parents pushed you in the past to get good grades. This past experience may also push you to get a better grade. Let's say you are a perfectionist. This will also help you to achieve better grades, even though you may hate science.
Now lets say you are someone who's parents never pushed them or threatened them to get good grades. You frankly couldn't care less about your grades. It is quite likely that you will get a bad grade in your science class.
It all depends on past experiences or genetics and likes and dislikes that effect how we act and respond to situations. All of which are out of our control. Of course we have the ability to choose to do anything, but we will never choose anything other than what we were already going to choose. Therefore, free will is an illusion. So my conclusion is that free will does not exist, unless we redefine what free will is.
If free will is consciousness of what we like and dislike, then we have free will.
If free will is the ability to make a choice without that choice depending on anything else such as genetics, or past experiences, then we do not have free will, I believe.
Free will is the freedom to make your own decisions, and voluntary choices.
No, we no longer have free will...the bureaucracy has taken that away from us working drones.
It appears that we have free will on the surface, but I don't think it actually exist. I believe we are all presented with choices in our life, but we are not conscious enough to see the whole big picture. Is like a flow chart, you have number of choices to make, and at the end of flowchart, we all end up with one result, death. Between the moment of our existence and the moment of our death, we are simply going through a series of journey at different stage in life. I'm pretty sure people will argue that this has nothing to do with free will, but if you think again, I think it does. If we really do have free will, why can't we choose not to die? I agree that choices we make in life point us toward different direction, but it doesn't mean it will shift the course of our life.
I get a kick out of the Rush song with the line "I will choose free will."
There's something of a logical dilemma there: if you don't have free will, you can't choose it. On the other hand, if you do have it, you can't NOT choose it, because you already have it.
Is this one of those paradoxes like, "this statement is false"?
Haha, exactly. Living in a Canadian border town, I've certainly heard that song enough times over the years, and I'd always be led to wonder whether they were trying to be ironic with that lyric. Knowing that the band were Ayn Rand fans, I don't think they were going for irony--I think they were expressing support for a sloppily defined version of 'free will', something more akin to the vague ways that 'freedom' often gets used in [mostly right-wing] political rhetoric in this country. You explained perfectly why that sentiment should never be expressed unironically, though. Although, now that I think of it, one of the only other lyrics of that song I could ever discern was 'If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice'. So they might've been going for a deeper philosophical point rather than a pure statement of libertarian political values...might have to spend a little time analyzing Rush lyrics today, which is not something I planned on doing.
I'm an uncompromising determinist with regards to everything in the universe, including this question. Some philosophers believe that human free will is compatible with determinism (this viewpoint is known as 'compatibilism', sensibly enough), but many of the arguments seem to take the form of 'we can't for sure rule out that free will exists in a determined/deterministic universe', which is more of a god-of-the-gaps-style argument than anything. Humans are physical entities that respond to stimuli in ways that are predictable enough even with our ultimately limited knowledge of psychology...imagine if a neuroscientist Laplace's Demon existed--theoretically, all of human behavior could be predicted (along with everything else)
Re: Laplace's Demon, the relevant quote is as follows:
'We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.'
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