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Do you believe in free will?

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  • 15 votes
BeOPSVMo 4 Mar 30
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18 comments

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0

Of course. What is the other option, some sort of devine plan?

0

Yes and No. I do what I please with my life, but also realize that those choices are mostly based on what offerings are given to me.

By which criteria do you choose among the choices given to you?

@BeOPSVMo What makes me happy, or is pleasing to me. It's the same way I choose followers for my cult.

1

We call it your conscience and it did not need anyone to gift it to us.Evolution did a great job!

I don't think free will is proposed as an alternative to consciousness. I believe in consciousness but not free will. "Consciousness" is a quality you have that means that there is "something it's like to be" you. "Free will" is a proposed mechanism by which organisms make choices i.e in such a way that you could have chosen differently than you did.

1

In what sense? We live surrounded by advertisers, cams, listening devices, i.e., Alexis, Google, Social media, prejudicial laws, neighbors, family, etc.

Do you think we would have free will the influences you mentioned were taken away?

@BeOPSVMo if all of that were taken away, we would be each living alone and still have circumstances, issues, decisions, etc. There is no free will. It isn't possible.

I agree. I don’t even know how to describe what’s being claimed when people say they have free will.

2

Depends what you mean by free will. Complete freewill is ostensively false I can't do everything and anything I wish to I am bound by circumstance, ability, time and all sorts of other forces beyond my control. Do I have options within the scope of decisions I can make. Well of course we are not automatons we have degrees of choice however even our brain isn't fully in our concious control. So the answer is to a small degree we have choice but free will is illusory. Its someting Christians say for an excuse to evil more than anything.

1

Yes but I think that needs to be defined.
Free will to believe or not to in anything?
Free will to do exactly what we want?

Both.

2

The Dilemma of Determinism is irrefutable. Either our choices are determined by something which doesn't give us free will or our choices are random which doesn't give us free will either. There are no other options beside that.

I actually don't believe that randomness is possible, and that only the first of your choices is. A basic example, I learned while going to school for programming, is that random number generators require seeds to be placed into algorithms. Those seeds are usually a numerical representation of the time-- down to a fraction of a second. Since the random number generator is never accessed in the same millisecond, each of that generator's outputs come out different and without pattern, which makes them seem random.

1

every human has a free will
is whether he will exercise his will right or not is the question

Rosh Level 7 Mar 31, 2018

Would addiction be an example of a human not exercising his or her will?

1

Yes but I know I'm probably wrong.
Free will, in my view, is probably the newtonian physics of neuroscience. Fine as an everyday operating system, but it breaks at a certain level of granularity.

I think I agree with you.

3

Not Fucking Again!

What do you mean?

@BeOPSVMo Never mind, if you hang around you will figure it out Sherlock.

3

Don't know, don't care. I do what l want to do within the means available to me. And whatever my dogs allow.

I agree that it’s important to underatand that we can make choices regardless of the mechanism by which we do so.

4

We choose the things we do by our own self. Not some type of marionette puppet with someone pulling strings.

What makes you think there isn’t a/aren’t puppet master(s)? Do you hope it isn’t the case?

2

Yes but none of us is free.

That image does a fantastic job in expressing one of my top frustrations.

it's very powerful when you think about it.

2

Yes, we all have choices.

yes but there are many solutions to your choices you won't like

The question isn't "Do we have choices?" It's "Could we have chosen differently?"

1

Absolutely...BTW, why is he locked up?

Q-G-M Level 2 Mar 30, 2018
2

In my opinion, of course there is free will, even with there being consequences, its still ur choice. I've done many things knowing full well what the consequences could be, I weighed weather it was worth it or not, and chose. Nobody chose for me

Byrd Level 7 Mar 30, 2018

You have a brain that weighs pros and cons. Your experiences have defined what you consider a "pro" and a "con".

@BeOPSVMo yes, i do...but i don't see how that pertains to the question, or my comment. not trying to sound like a jerk, i really just think im missing your point.

You said "Nobody chose for me". Does "me" refer to your brain, or something else? In other words-- is there anything aside from your brain that your choices come from?

@BeOPSVMo me refers to all of me, my brain, the rest of my body, my thoughts. but no i don't think my choices come from anywhere but my own mind. my choices may be affected by outside influences, but that doesnt mean its still not a choice. in other words, i may be given a different set of options than i thought i was dealing with at first, but in the end, aside from a few things like if you are going to die today or not( which you can still make into a choice if you opt for suicide) yeah, i have a choice

2

There are consequences of actions, we think we can do as we please, but free will is really an illusion. Often we want to do one thing and do another.

You can do it, you just have to be willing to accept the consequences, right?

watch the film, jack reacher as I think firstly it's a great film and secondly it shows really how free you are. you do have to forget all the DNA jack leaves on the corpses he makes but its still a valid film.

2

Many posts on free will you can look at.

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